There is no point to public farting if you can’t watch others enjoy the aroma.

so disappointing,
people arguing over the price
of land, not liberty.

For the third time in as many weeks, I’ve been awaken by the sound of an ice cream truck rolling down our street, playing some god-awful out of tune tin-penny piano music. Because of this I walked five houses up the block to our new neighbors, who have an old ice-cream truck parked next to their driveway.

After inquiring if he’d been driving it around late at night, he told me that he hadn’t because the vehicle no longer runs. He also told me that he too, had heard the music and simply assumed it was some kids thinking they were being funny.

“Maybe you’re right,” I acknowledged as I thanked him and returned home.

At least I know I’m not going nuts as my neighbor has heard the music too. So I decided to forget about it because in the long run, it was small stuff and why sweat it.

Laughing it off as a prank, I mentioned it on social media. Then some one listed only as ‘Unknown User’ sent me this audio file of the creepy-as-hell music.

Kinda left me spooked…

Then, last night, it came again. This time though, the music neither seemed to fade or increase as if the vehicle were coming and going.

Instead, when I finally got out of bed to look, I saw it simply sitting in the middle of the street and in front of our home. When whomever saw me looking out the blinds, they slowly drove away, the broken tin-penny piano fading away with them.

Surprisingly, they returned an hour later.

This time the dome light was on in the cab of the truck and the side window was open and lit. As I peered at the truck with it awful music still playing, I witnessed a clown walking back and forth in the work area of the vehicle and another in the driver’s seat.

‘You cream, I scream, we all scream for ice cream,’ is one thing — but this is down-right frightening, damn it! I quickly went to my closet and retrieved my shot-gun, but by the time I returned to the front room window, the truck and the clowns were gone.

Since then I’ve called the law, who promise to increase patrols and I’ve bought and installed security cameras and motion-sensitive lighting. I fervently hope this is all a prank and furthermore, I pray that no parent would allow their child out of the house to visit the truck because I have an uneasy feeling when it comes to this situation.

I promise to keep you up-to-speed if anything becomes of these incidents and of course, if you see or hear an ice cream truck making the rounds about midnight through your neighborhood, I expect to hear from you as well…

Be someone with a mind, not only an attitude.

While surveying the gap, he felt himself shoved forward. He quickly slid in, penetrating a vast darkness. Over and over again, he tried to escape. The exertion left him violently sick. He was deflated by the time he was yanked from the pit.

Nine months later…

My wife asked me to quit singing “I’m a Believer,’ by the Monkees because it was annoying her. At first I thought she was kidding, but then I saw her face.

I’d let my inner-child out to play, but the little bastard always wants to get naked and run around in the front yard.

It was around one in the morning and I was doing my last patrol through the second construction site. Since my last encounter, I had begun parking in better lighted areas, not that it would help much other than to lessen my anxieties, which were practically off the charts.

As I pulled up under the street light down the street from the site’s entrance, I reached back for my lunch bag, only to be interrupted by the radio.

“We have a silent alarm in the southwest corner of Building ‘B,’ at Site Two” the dispatcher said.

I sighed and replaced my lunch, slipped the vehicle into drive and headed towards the site, “Damn it! And I jus’ check that area.”

As I pulled up to the front of the building and opened my door, Charlie-dog bolted from the cab, racing right over me. I shouted for him to stop, to come back, but it did no good.

“Shit,” I thought, “Now I’m out here alone with those things.”

Then I heard the sound of growling. It wasn’t jus’ any growling either; it was the type of sound that a dog makes when it has it’s teeth clamped tight on on something and is tugging at it.

I quickly hurried towards the sound.

But by the time I located it, Charlie had someone by the throat, savagely thrashing back and forth like he was trying to rip the person’s head off. Meanwhile, the guy was trying to push him back, but Charlie kept lunging in at him whenever he lost her grip.

By the time I pulled Charlie off the man, I was certain he was going to die from his injuries. But the guy clambered to his feet, even though much of his skin was ripped away and hanging along his right shoulder.

How he was still conscious, let alone alive, I had no idea. Then man started fingering at the torn skin around his neck and shoulder, peeling it away.

As he pulled and the skin came away, he continued down his right shoulder and then along his arm, until he had peeled away much of his chest. Underneath was another skin, this one a pale-gray, slick with blood, and fitting closely to the body.

The outside skin fell to the cement floor, sounding like a wet diving suit fresh from the ocean. As I recoiled from the sickening sound, and continued to struggle with a nearly wild Charlie-dog, the creature bolted into the darkness.

Bodily picking Charlie up, I rushed back to the truck, tossed him in the cab, climbed in behind him and drove out of the lot. It took me several minutes to compose myself enough to radio in that I found nothing, though I was sure I’d ‘heard a dog trotting around the area.’

Later that morning, I switched on the clock-radio by my bedside, listening in surprise as the woman announced, “Area law enforcement are busy this morning responding to reports of missing persons. So far nearly 100 reports have been filed.  They also say that a rash of strange, what are being described as skins, have been found in various locations throughout the region. It hasn’t been confirmed or denied if the two situations are connected. In other news…”

Shutting off the radio, I set my alarm then patted Charlie-boy, as he lay snuggled up against me on the bed, whispering, “You’re a good boy, Charlie.”

His tail thumped softly at the sound of his name.

If evolution really worked, things would fall ‘together’ instead of ‘apart.’

Life can’t fall apart if you’ve never had it together.