Ice Cream Sandwiches

yummy

Ice Cream Sandwiches
BY ALEX MARIA


Delicate and happy clinking of a music box; tugging gently at her ears. She stretches her legs and flexes the tips of her toes against a cocoon of blankets.

The sound pries her eyes open; her room is cast in perfect sunlight, streaming through the open window. Everything glows as if framed in crystal. A breeze rustles the sheer curtains, they dance to the ongoing tune of the music box, Spring is in the air.

Still does not rise, she is too comfortable. She inhales, to draw the fine morning air into the depth of her body... but it is sticky in her nose- tainted with strings of gross stink.


The breeze picks up and scatters the intrusive smell, but now she is fully awake, the dream like purity of the morning has been shattered. And her room is still filled with the chiming of the music box.

Music box? 

Who was playing it? It seemed like it was coming from the street below and, by the quality of its sound at such a distance, it must have been quite large- it must have been gigantic...

But that didn’t make any sense because giant music boxes aren't a thing. At least as far as she's ever seen- and why would it be outside her house?

She throws off the blankets, sheds the last delirium of sleep, and realizes the lovely music must have been coming from an ice cream truck!

She brings her arms up over her head,  points her toes, with a mighty yawn. And she climbs out of bed.

The first ice cream truck of the season! Adultness drips away like water through her fingers, and she's a kid again, if just for a moment. And it's not just this herald for the end of Winter- it's also an excuse to forget about health and eat for joy.

The song lifts her. Aside from the busy chirping of birds, it seems to be the only sound drifting through her open window... Where were the delighted screams of her neighbor’s children- they were loud every morning.... Doubly strange that they are silent with an icecream truck in the neighborhood.

But what kind of person would she be if she let a little mystery distract her from the childlike anticipation which coursed through her now? So what if the neighborhood kids miss out on a couple ice cream sandwiches? There problem, not hers.

She eyes the little cuckoo clock on the opposite wall. It's already ten, much later than she would normally sleep- but it's a Saturday so it's ok, the only thing on her schedule is: icecream.

She rushes into her PJs, she doesn't want to miss this opportunity and knows enough to hurry. But she can't help taking a peek through her window.

To her relief, a large group of people are gathered around the ice cream truck, mostly adults though there's a handful of children.

Good, a crowd of customers means she has time to get down there before the driver pulls away.

Her stomach rumbles. She thinks of ice cream sandwiches and dipped cones, and half pints, and fudge bars- she can almost taste them.

Her mother would scold that ice cream was not part of a healthy and nutritious breakfast diet… but she is an adult, and what her mother doesn't know won't hurt her. Why shouldn't an adult partake in the supremely innocent and profoundly guilty joy that is icecream for breakfast? No shame in that.

She snatches up her purse and digs out some cash.

She has plenty, nutritious breakfast be damned.

She knows the crowd gives her time, but the happy jingle tune still urges her to hurry. She might have run out in her pajamas, and skittered barefoot across the pavement- whistling and singing all the while. 

But she is far too grown to be so carefree.

She changes into real clothes... As quickly as she can. She slips on a pair of cheap plastic sandals  and zips downstairs with cash in hand.

She 's fantasizing and that's how she realizes she's already decided her menu: an ice cream sandwich (or sandwiches) would hit the spot. She remembers the fleeting magic of gooey-chocolatey-cookie-goodness sticking to her fingers and muses that it's probably been 15 years since she's actually eaten an ice cream sandwich.

Will it taste as wonderful as she remembers?

She opens the door, and steps into brilliant sunlight. She thumbs the button lock absent mindedly and yanks the door shut.

She hops down the steps; swinging her arms as she goes. She raises a hand towards her neighbor's house, but her hand falls mid-wave.

Mrs. Givens isn't out on her porch watching the traffic. She chuckles and shakes her head. Mrs Givens and her terrier sat on that porch through some of the nastiest weather, and here they were indoors on the first truly beautiful day of the year. She saunters down the sidewalk towards the ice cream truck.

It is a creamy white color with prink framing and a playful row of rainbow sprinkle letters which proudly declare, 'Frozen Treats!' The exclamation point is a slender ice cream cone hovering above a maraschino cherry.

The menu beneath is equally peppy, the music is still happy, and her mood couldn't be better.

She can't help but skip as she makes her way down the street- a grown woman frolicking across the street... She is sure she looks foolish but why should she care?

She's having her magic moment, like the kids who followed the legendary piper. The only difference: they were under a spell, and she is not. There's no real magic in her morning, this was pure psychology. It's all still very pleasant, but it isn't truly an escape.

She isn't really a little girl again- she's only playing make believe.

The thought dulls her spirits ever so slightly and she slows to a walk. She couldn't go back to the happier times, But she can have her ice cream, goddamnit… In a world without magic and happy endings she'd take those little moments of stupid bliss every whenever they came along.

The smell, the one which had insulted her nose before, hits her again, and the wind carries it away just as quick. She furrows her brow and wrinkles her nose, and figures that there must have been some kind of ongoing construction down one of the neighboring streets. She puts it out of her mind.

She looks right and left and, finding the road completely clear, she she begins to cross the street, picking up her skip once again. It's one of the first days of Spring- a glorious, sunny, blue-skies kind of day- and that makes her feel really nice… Almost as if there were such a thing as magic all along- only it plays behind the scenes and only seasons life with the merest of pinches.

Only... the smell is still there, either that or it lingers in her nose.

On a sudden, she remembers just how quiet it is. Just the music and the birds. The neighborhood boys aren’t whooping and hollering.

The Morelli boys had been out every Saturday since the snow melted and they were hard to miss- Still no Mrs Givens either.

Maybe they were in the crowd and she just couldn't see them…

But the Morelli boys were never quiet. And the crowd was silent as the grave. Perhaps they were all deep in thought weighing their menu options with all diligence.

No. Ridiculous.

A feeling of unease tingles in her veins. Something feels wrong.

Where were her neighbors?

Then she brings her palm to her forehead with a smack- of course.

It's the first really nice day of Spring. Those kids played outside whenever they could, but with the weather being this nice they must've hopped on their bikes and ditched the picket fences for the unrestrained freedom of one of the nearby parks. Their loss.

She kicks herself for skiddishness. She's being stupid. There's nothing wrong.

And Old Lady Givens must have shuffled into her car and ditched the porch to take her little fuzz ball of a friend- out to celebrate the turn of the weather by sniffing and peeing all over said park.

Yeah, that was all pretty obvious now that she's reasoned it out.

And so what if the street is quiet, it isn’t deserted. There's a small crowd of children and their parents waiting to buy from the truck.

The clinky music washes over them all.

She lets her unease fall by the wayside.

Still,  it'd be nice to hear a friendly voice. She scans the crowd for a familiar face...

But oddly... she can't spot a single person she knows, not from behind anyhow. She imagines that maybe a dude wouldn't have such difficult time recognizing and identifying people by their asses.

She considers calling out, to see who turns towards her. But the thought of sending her voice out to a crowd she doesn't quite recognize... Her social anxiety forbids it.

So she quietly approached the silent crowd.

It's almost like they're all under a spell- unable to break the enchanting tune of the pied-icecream-truck-piper with the intrusions of their own voices. She laughs at the thought, but the second her own voice spills out across the road she wishes with full, instant regret that she could recall it to her larynx and leave the chuckle trapped deep down.

A couple of those in waiting turn towards her at the sound, their faces utterly blank.

They aren't smiling. That observation strikes her and then it is the only thing she can think about. They shuffle a bit in anticipation, but that's all. Of course! It's obvious- she tries to tell herself anyhow– they're shuffling out of impatient hunger.

They're waiting for their popsicles and cones, and that dufus of an ice cream trucker is taking his sweet, sweet time with the scoop. No wonder they aren’t smiling. She feels like she's grasping at straws, but what else could explain the weirdness of the crowd before her?

She acts normal- even they're all acting so bizarre.

The crowd is  thick, she realizes with dismay: it will be a while
before she gets to place her order. She's not sure a couple of ice cream sandwiches are really worth the wait- considering her present company. But, she's come this far.

It'd be a real shame if she were to miss out.

Besides, she didn't have a damn thing else to do today.

She takes another step forward and the wind changes.

Her hair flutters, in the cool spring breeze, and she might have relished in it if it hadn’t born that same ungodly, foul odor as before; this time in overwhelming fierceness.

It is utterly putrid and thicker than the crowd, practically suffocating. She holds her nose supresses a retch. The air on her face starts to feel the way it smells, that is to say: germ ridden and disgusting. All at once, it's like ice cream sandwiches have never existed- the thought of desserts in general has been banished with lightning speed- replaced by an overwhelming desire to escape to a hot shower.

She knows this stench, it is the vile stink of the latrine, the portable toilet, the septic system. It is the evil smell of human waste. She looks for a septic truck, one of those beastly machines with hoses on it that siphon out tanks that have passed the point of pipe return.

But everybody on her block is connected to the sewer.

There must have been a sewer backup in one of her neighbor’s houses. That really sucks. Not only for them, but for the whole neighborhood, apparently.

It was odd that an ice cream driver would try to advertise in such grossly polluted air, and odder still that such advertisements would stimulate the appetites of any customers at all. The few in the crowd who had heard her laugh were still eyeing her.

And the music is still playing.

And the smell is so bad she might swoon.

Why isn't anybody placing their order? What the hell?!

Walking stiffly forward, she still tries to identify the source. No people, no vehicles in sight- except the truck and its quiet, eager customers.

But the smell is unbearable. It was worse than a farm, and it seems to be blossoming. She thought of a line from Poe's Raven: 'Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer.'
The makes her laugh, then curse herself for such a flagrant misuse of the man's words.

Then she realizes....

The smell hadn't just been getting thicker as she increased the
distance between her and home… It had also been getting thicker as she decreased the distance between herself and the truck.

She gives up on icecream.

In fact she thinks she'll probably give up on breakfast all together.

She turns back toward her house, her appetite and happiness both squarely in the past, and she spares one last glance at the odd and pitiful crowd.

She looks, really looks- and realizes with quiet revulsion that a number of the customers in the milling crowd had lumpy bulges in the seats of their pants. She stops in her tracks, unable to do anything but stare.  Some who wear whiter and more delicate clothing have faint, brownish stains running down their pant legs.

Brownish doodoo stains, how in the name of sweet-insanity had she not noticed them sooner?

She couldn’t say. it was hard to say anything when her entire world was crashing down.

But it explained the source of the raw-sewage smell. Who in their right mind would eat at an ice cream truck that gives people the shits? Not her. If there had been a part of her that would have ever eaten ice-cream again, it was now permanently murdered.

She wonders if she's going to barf.

Raw sewage… Leslie Nielsen’s dead-pan expression came to her out of the depths of her memory. From a cop comedy sequel numbered in fractions, his voice so cool, and humorless “I’ve been swimming in raw sewage…I love it.”

Nothing funny about this Leslie, poo jokes had their place- in fiction. The real deal wasn’t even worth smiling about. And where the hell did that thought come from? She hadn't seen those movies in years? Her mind is twitching like a rabbit caught in a trap.

She watches them in disgust, and realizes they must all be waiting for refunds.

It was literally the only thing that made sense: they'd eaten the icecream, and it had caused them to violently evacuate their bowels. Why weren't they yelling then?
She’d be yelling, oh yes she would, you better bet your life.

Or maybe not.

Maybe she’d be too ashamed to do anything beyond mumble and plead with her eyes, begging the icecream man to make his mistake right with some money... while said 'mistake' baked in the sunlight of the first Spring day.

Yep, they're all subdued by their humiliation. Nothing else could even begin to explain this.

What other rational account could there be? 

She found herself reddening from embarrassment, ashamed for their sakes.

The looks on their faces drove the point home. They were pale and weak, and not very animated.

Those poor, poor people.

She watches them for a moment in quiet horror, until one of those who had looked at her earlier, starts to move forward, towards her.

Dear God, had she laughed? The laugh had been about something else, but how could the shamed customer know that, when she herself couldn't even remember what the hell she'd laughed at to begin with. And now he is approaching her with slow, shuffling steps.

Oh God, the awkwardness of making eye contact with someone who had just lost their shit… Literally.

"I'm sorry" she says, feeling as though she's been caught peeping.

"It's not my business, I'm just going to go."

At her words a few more turn their eyes on her. Their gazes are piercing. She feels accused and hated.

The first one, the one who had started walking towards her groans, as though his bowels are still in terrible pain.

Why had she not left sooner? It was like a train wreck and she –like the good little rubbernecker she was- had just stared. And now they all knew she'd seen them in their shame.

And hadn't she been secretly judging them too? Of course, she had.

Who wouldn’t? They all had shit in their pants.

She regrets it now, on her life, she regrets it. Never has she felt more on the spot. She backs away, waving nervously and awkwardly, she has no idea what to say.

She can't imagine any possible way for this feeling of awkwardness to last any less than forever.

She thinks of turning to walk away, but she can't bear the thought of all those eyes stabbing at her back.

Pitiable gazes and expressionless faces, all track her movement...

Then their feet follow suite.

Others in the crowd, roused by the movement of their companions, notice her, turn towards her, and advance in kind. One of them burps; a big, meaty, substantial belch. He doesn't beg anyone’s pardon, but why should he? What's a belch, compared to self-defecation?

Her heart beat getting faster, thudding louder and harder with every passing beat.

Now they're starting to pursue her. Pursue, that was the only adequate word for it.

Their expressions are still void, as they shamble in her direction.

Why?

The answer which springs to her mind is fucking impossible.

Zombies don’t exist. But here they are walking towards her.

Impossible, impossible, impossible.

The clouds part, and she has a moment of unwanted clarity: she understands the deeply unsettling reason for their soiled trousers. It makes sense actually, she’d heard before that people sometimes… have a bowel realease as they die, because of the relaxing of the sphincter. With that realization, the morbidly awkward became the morbidly terrifying; the self-defecations are no longer a carry-over from food-borne illness, but the bowel release of the dead- dead who are now, somehow, walking.

The horror of it is like a slap in the brain, yet odd little thoughts still drift through the quaking landscape of her frantic mind. She understands, for instance, why that biological reality of sphincter relaxation was excluded from zombie fiction in general. People wanted to be scared, not grossed out. But here the reality is, slapping her in the face and drilling her in the nose.

An overwhelming and primal fear begins to course through her veins, but she squashes it right down, compacts it in the pit of her stomach. Zombies are not real, these are human beings, playing some kind of prank.

But no… No prankster would being willing to poo themselves for a joke. This is the real deal..

But that's impossible. Impossible. They are just sick, maybe. Just customers who'd eaten bad icecream.

"I'm sorry" she shouts to no one in particular and to no avail. After it's out, she realizes her apology will do precious little to ease their suffering.

But why are these angry customers following her?

Impossible.

The shout has turned the last few heads which were still focused on the ice cream truck. The entire crowd is now moving in her direction.

As they pull away from the truck she is offered one horrifying glimpse at what remains of the driver.

Bloody smears and chunks lay on the counter and the asphalt.

Those who had been closest- adults and children alike- have blood on their hands... And their chests... And faces.
She almost shits herself too.

Well they were really zombies. Definitely zombies.

Impossible but real.

That primal fear- the one she had smooshed way down- blossoms like foam from a can under pressure. It manifests as downright, outright panic.

She is at her door in the course of three heavy heartbeats, her steps- augmented with a full dose of adrenaline- carried her through the air in big sweeping arcs, like the winged sandals of Hermes.

She tries the door and, curses herself for having locked it. She fumbles the clasp on her bag, trying to get her keys. That adrenal blast had given her legs and calves unknown strength so that each step had been a leap, but it has overcharged her fingers and turned them into shaky imprecise sausage links.

Though her back is to them, the image of their bloody, sullen, poo-stained approach is at the forefront of her mind urging her to speed.

A clear thought gallops through the frantic blur. They had killed that poor ice cream man with their bare hands. And teeth. She didn’t want those fingers pulling at her limbs and tugging at her flesh… those teeth sinking into her.

Her fingers are unreliable, they don't do what she tells them to and
she cant. work. the. God. Damned. Clasp.

She swears, but that doesn't help.

She latches her fingers on either side of the bag and tears as hard as she can, it bursts at the seam. Cosmetics and a couple months worth of receipts are flung in every direction. She's impressed with herself for she-hulking that purse-pinata so effortlessly.

She shakes out the contents that haven't already spilled, out onto the porch- and falls right among them, her fingers groping and roving.

She needs her fucking keys!

There are whirly gigs from maple trees and a spattering of pine needles too, on the smooth concrete surface.

She thrusts them aside along with the miscellany from her purse.

Of all the things to notice, at a time like this, whirly gigs and pine needles?! At the same time, she fails to notice that the needles have pierced the soft skin of her finger tips.

She picks up her cellphone in the search but sets it down again when she realizes why she's not seeing her keys.

She had hung them up last night before bed. They were on the hook beside the door. Less than two feet from her, but totally inaccessible, locked behind the door they matched. Near enough to swallow in terms of absolute value, but for all intents and purposes they might as well not exist.

She rails against the door, throwing her body with all the force she can muster. And it is her body, not the door which gives way.

Wrenching pain in her shoulder and she doubles over with a pitiful cry.

A hand claws at her side, and she screams.

It's the kind of scream humans release when they are no longer thinking persons, but so entirely consumed with fear that they are momentarily devolved and primitive animals, like those which sired their tree dwelling, great-great-great-great millionth grandparents.

... A scream which can be crudely translated to modern English as

"I'm fucked!"

She leapt high into the air then, acting totally on instinct and reflex.

Complex thought is no longer a thing for her.

She lands awkwardly on her sandaled foot, and although that kind of landing would normally have caused her to wince and sit and take a look, it can't stop her panicked flight. She powers right through the pain- life or death and all that.

Like a spooked deer, she races into the street, darting between her pursuers with a previously unknown agility; her jukes put Bugs

Bunny to shame.

But then, she gets out in to the open and stumbles; trips over her own sandals. She kicks them off with frenetic twitches of her ankle and knee which send jolts of pain up through her rolled ankle.

She bolts once more.

Attempting to bolt would be a more apt description. Her already rolled ankle snagged the concrete curb, and sent her sailing head long into the turf.

She's crying now, and the tears mingle with dirt on her face in streaks of bitter, gritty mud.

She struggles to her knees and feels a pair of hands wrap around her good ankle.

Her scream is a complete outpouring of terror.

Never in her life had she been so utterly spent and completely afraid. The scream itself pushes her vocal cords to their very limits, straining her voice and causing her throat to burn and tear all once.

She sobs and claws out big chunks of sod as she bucks against the hands which hold her.

Her eyes are clenched shut.

Another pair of hands turns her face up. Her next scream is hoarse,
and crackling.

A snot bubble erupts out of her nostril and she starts to choke.

She throws her hands up in front of her, desperately trying to ward of the monsters which crowd in on her.

Each cough feels like a jagged rake on her raw trachea. She sobs, she coughs. She tries to scream but the only sound which she can make is a high pitched and disappointing squeak.

Her body clenches in anticipation of their full attack.

There is nothing.

No beating delivered, no teeth tear into her, and no grimy fingernails claw her body.

She opens her eyes, which are themselves now sore from the severity of their previous clenching. The forms around her are dim; wobbly silhouettes in tear-blurred vision.

They are shaking. Some seem to be miming caricatures of laughter and pointing down at her.

She stops trying to scream, but the coughing, and the crying can not be helped.

Sounds she’d selectively ignored spill back into her conscious awareness.

They are giggling. Their laughter surrounds her with embarrassment and confusion.

How long had she lain there, in shock and terror at their feet as they hee-hawed over her like a bunch of hysterical jackasses?

She has no idea.

And she is too tired- too afraid, to relieved- to be angry. They re pointing at her and laughing, laughing at her. The fear drains out of her and is replaced by bleeding humiliation.

She nurses her sore throat with her hand and rises to her knees and then to her feet, flinching at the sharp pain in the joint of her ankle.

She wipes her tears away, or tries to, but all that accomplishes is a dirty smear across her eyes and cheeks.

She questiones them with her bewildered eyes. And gradually their whooping guffaws dwindle down. Most of the people around her are wiping away their own tears: tears of mirth.

One of them speaks up, "Thanks doll that was really great." Then he turns to the rest, "great work guys!"

Thanks? Great work? Now she feels holy anger roiling in the pit of her stomach and at the base of her skull. They terrorized her, caused her an injury, and laughed at her expense. She hates them all. She wants to kill the adults and kick the little kids. "What the hell!?" She whisper-croaks on her useless voice box.

"What the hell?" The first speaker croaks back in an exaggerated mockery of her own voice, sending another round of raucous laughter through the crowd.

He looks at her and finally sighs, "We’re pranksters! It was all a prank! There’s no such thing as zombies; I mean come on. You were so gullible though- you should have seen the look on your face!"

The speaker, who must have been the leader squeals with delight.

"A prank?" She wheezes, it hurts bad to talk.

He nods impatiently, "A prank, all of it. We are part of a flash mob!"

“Flash horde!” Corrects one of the pranksters, perhaps one of the children. A round of laughter ripples through the crowd.

She’s heard about flash mobs in the past, but usually they just do goofy-crap nonsense, like show up at one place and time, and sing one of the numbers from Cats, before running away high-fiving each other. This was a bit more elaborate than what she’d expect from the typical flash-mob. But is there any such thing as typical with this kind of weirdness?

"Well you obviously aren't actual zombies. So you didn't actually all poo yourselves and kill an Ice cream man?"

She involuntarily sniffed the air- God the stink was all around her!

He laughed again, "Well we did actually poo ourselves, but that's how for real we are. We had to make it convincing! Everything for the joke!"

She is hesitant to accept that. Who would poo themselves, all for a joke?

The glimpse of the driver had also been so revolting, though it had been from afar and brief. "And the driver..."

The leader answers with a dismissive wave of his hand, "All part of the prank! He's still over there! Hilarious!" He turns to his flash-mob co-conspirators, “Really great execution today guys, keep checking your hub messages, so we can plan a second get together somewhere else!”

She begins to relax, her fears and angers half abated half exhausted.

As they evaporate other feelings fill the void they left and assume the mantle of her thoughts, chief among them: embarrassment, and frustration.

She limps over to the porch, and dropped onto her butt, slumping with her head in her hands.

The crowd starts to disperse, some of the pranksters thanked her personally and many give her a pat on the shoulder or the back.

They tell her how great she was.

They eventually scatter back into the random lives from whence they came, like cockroaches scurrying away from the light.

After they are finally gone, she concludes that they were real shit-holes.

The ones with the red paint on their hands had even ruined her blouse when they patted her shoulders.

But she is also in awe.

They shat on themselves to make their prank convincing? What?

She mused with peripheral disgust that she was going to take three
showers, and never wear these clothes again in case they got any on her.

It’s not like she could wear them again anyway, they had been grass stained into extinction by her pathetic groveling on the front lawn.

And pawed red by their douche-bag-paint hands.

The music of the ice cream truck had been playing all along, and it still is. The tune is no longer happy or inviting to her, and she doubts it ever would be again.

The very thought of an ice cream sandwich makes her nauseated.

Curse those freaks, and damn them straight to hell for ruining that for her.

She watches the truck, and the driver, waiting for him to get up and drive away.

A queasy feeling comes over her. His makeup looks so convincing, though the leader’s voice rang in her ears, “All part of the prank, he’s still over there… Hilarious.”

"Hey asshole," she shouts through her cupped hands, "shows over freak, hit the road!"

She shouldn't have shouted. It hurt her throat.

She watches.

No response. He's lying awfully still.

Her pulse is thudding in her ears- perfectly off tempo and out of sync with the shitty icecream truck music.

She stares hard.

Then her heart leaps into her throat and sticks there. She definitely
just saw a drop of blood fall from his outstretched hand to the fake puddle below.

"Hey buddy, please go now. Come on you've had your fun."

Another drop lands with a delicate splish-splash… Great, ice cream trucks, ice cream sandwiches, and now the splash of road puddles.

What other childhood nostalgias could be destroyed today.

The music was starting to make her really upset.

She doesn't want to, but what choice does she have? She has to go look, go and see.

She is terrified he'll jump and scare her and laugh.

But she's more terrified he won't.

She draws near enough to see just how torn open his flesh is. He has bite marks and claw marks all over his body, and large pieces of muscle and fat are... simply missing.

She whimpers an awful, inarticulate sound and stumbles backwards in frantic, disgusted horror; alternatively spider walking on her bad ankle and butt hopping towards her house.

She feels her breakfast would have been better off outside her belly; but remembers in between dry heaves that she hasn't had any to begin with.

Ice cream sandwiches were supposed to have filled that role... She was supposed to have been licking their residue off her finger-tips.

Oh God. There had been blood on their fingertips… actual blood.

She is suddenly hyper alert to the bloody hand prints on her blouse, aware that they are not red paint. She rips it off in utter revulsion giving absolute-zero fucks about her bare-chestedness.

She runs to the porch and begins searching frantically amid the scattered contents for her cell.

She needs her phone, she needs the police.

She is locked out and there's a band of murdering, poo-smeared pranksters perhaps still in her neighborhood.

Cannibalistic pranksters, she reminds herself desperately.

Pranksters who re planning on meeting up again to prank some other community.

The silence she had so easily dismissed earlier now comes back to her ears and mind with crushing force.

Why is the neighborhood so quiet, and why has she been the only one of her neighbors to come out for ice cream? What the fuck happened to the Morellis? To Mrs. Givens? The rest?

A chill slides way down her spine, and she once again starts to cry.

The neighborhood boys weren’t playing catch at the park, and Old

Lady Givens wasn’t walking Freckles in the park.

She tries not to imagine their gnawed up corpses.

What the fuck!?

What was going to happen to her?

She imagines them standing behind her neighbors’ trees, crouching behind garbage pails, or squatting behind the vehicles which still remained parked in the drive ways up and down the street.

Oh God-

Are they still nearby, watching her with bloody grins and holding back their gleeful, idiot laughter right now? And where the fuck is her phone?! She had set it right down in her panic, looking for the keys. Where was it now?

She thinks she hears a rustle, and spins around- her spine rigid. She see's nothing. Maybe it was the butchered ice cream man’s apron fluttering in the breeze. She realizes that the fact her mind seized that thought as a comfort just proves how terribly hopeless her situation is.

She hears something fall, and then roll, like a glass bottle on asphalt.

A childlike snicker from behind the privacy fence which had once belonged to Old Lady Givens and her dog- it was stifled so quickly she couldn’t even be sure she heard it.

But she is sure.

She's sure that the joke isn't over.

The treetops sway in a gentle breeze, so too the ice cream man's bloody apron.