I don’t mind where I’m at right now, I really don’t. I think it could be better, but I can’t complain. In fact people like, you know, the constant “I hate my life” or “Everything sucks here” really grind my gears. Sure it’s a pretty difficult step in your life, but nothing compared to the real world, and I’m sick and tired of all the constant complaining I deal with, every single day. It’s like taking the most annoying pop-punk album you can imagine, putting it in movie form, and living in that movie. Pure torture. Besides all of this, I’m not too displeased with my life.

I’m Mason. I’m seventeen, if the brief description of my age group wasn’t obvious enough. I’ve been living in Elmbrook for the past ten years or so. A town ruled by dirt, snow, dirty snow, and farmland. Walking from house to house almost feels like walking for a lifetime in a desert that’s cold as ice. It’s not that exciting of a town, but once you’ve reached the age to where you’re able to be mobile, it gets a lot better. The only downside to driving here are, for one, terrible drivers, and secondly, all your friends asking for rides (or more specifically, getaways.). Yes, driving around bored, drugged up teenagers doesn’t sound like a lot of fun, but neither does helping them escape from the cops after yet another would be drug bust. I’ve never been a drug person myself, but I’ve learned to live with it since almost all my friends are into it one way or another. It’s not always like this, although a good chunk of it is, but here’s something from my life that isn’t an example of that…

One frigid, snowy Friday night, I stopped in at Taco Bell to satisfy my daily hunger for their nachos. As soon as I’m done paying for my food, I get a phone call. I rush to a seat with my tray, and pull my phone from my pocket swiftly. It was my friend Jimmy.

“Yeah?” I answered, shoving a few nachos in my mouth.

“Hey bro, what are you doing today?”

“I don’t know, man. Right now I’m just eating.”

“Well you should come down and hang with me and the group. We’re up at the park by the lake. Think we might leave somewhere else though, it’s getting kind of boring.”

“I might… but I’m not in much of a mood to help you guys do anything against the law.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it man. We’re just hanging around.”

“Alright, it’s better than just sitting around all day. Are you all going to be there until I get up there?”

“Yeah, we’ll stay put.”

“Alright, I’ll be there in a minute.”

“Okay, catch ya later dude.”

I hung up the phone, finished my nachos, and refilled my drink. I went in my car and started driving towards the park. I began worrying that Jimmy might be, once again, dragging me into another one of his stupid getaways, but after a while I didn’t even care. I was bored as it is.

I arrived at the park, and it was more crowded than I could imagine. I’ve never seen so many people there before in my life, and all of them seemed to be my age. There were a lot more people on the “gangsta” side here than my normal crowd, the punks and metalheads. People with football jerseys, long chain wallets, diagonally turned baseball caps, and pants hanging off all their butts. One of the kids had heart underwear, which gave me a good chuckle.

After wandering through the sea of boxers, I stumble upon Jimmy and the rest of the group.

“Jimmy! What’s going on?” I exclaimed. Jimmy turned around after talking to Sarah, his girlfriend, and said to me, “Hey man, I want you to meet some good friends of mine.” Jimmy led me toward some of his buddies and said to one who had a big, nasty scar on his face. “Hey man, this is Mason. One of my best friends I told you about.”

“Oh yeah,” One of the kids replied, “How’s it going?”

“Fine… uh… I guess.” I said, hesitantly. Jimmy interrupted and said “So yeah, you up for having a little fun tonight?” I replied, “Oh no. What do you mean by fun?”

“Well it’s just that, uh…” Jimmy put out, before I interrupted him, “I hope this isn’t another one of your drug escapades.”

“No, not at all dude. We’re just about to pull a little prank.” Jimmy said, growing a halfway demonic smirk. A spark of excitement went off in my stomach, and my eyes widened, to which I replied “Oh… sounds kind of cool. Who’s getting pranked?”

“Derekson.” He said with a cool smirk. Michael Derekson is the principal of our high school, not to mention one of the biggest jerks in the area. Hearing that these guys were going to screw with him got me very excited, since I’ve wanted his to come for quite a while.

“Dude, I’ll totally join you. Sounds like you actually have a good idea for once.” I said sarcastically. Jimmy’s grim died. Trying to keep everything going, I asked what we’re going to do.

“We’re going to break into his house and put red dye in his shower.” Jimmy’s friend said, “He’s going to go through the roof.”

“Whoa…” I said, astounded at how great an idea that sounded, “Yeah I’m most definitely up for this. When are we doing it?” I asked, not even thinking about the consequences that could be involved.

“An hour or so.” Jimmy replied.

“Cool.” I said, “Who’s all coming? And does anyone know where he lives?”

“Just me and Jimmy, dude.” Jimmy’s friend replied, “And about 2 miles away.”

“Awesome!” I exclaimed, “I’m ready when you guys are, this sounds like fun.” We waited for the time to pass by while hanging around with the crowd. A lot of them were contemplating doing drugs, so I was glad we were about to leave.


About an hour later, we drove down Derekson’s street, looking for his house. It took a few minutes, but we eventually found his place.

“That’s it!” Jimmy yelled, “The one with the blue car in the driveway.”

Derekson’s house has an evil feel to it. It wasn’t boarded up or falling apart, but it wasn’t something you wanted to step foot in. I visualized the inside to look like a dungeon with satanic imagery, chained-up, rabid pit bulls, and various victims of his, impaled on stakes suspended from his wall.

We walked around his house in search of his bedroom window to make sure he was asleep. We found it successfully, and he was sound asleep in bed with his wife.

“Alright, good.” Jimmy whispered, “Now I guess we can bust in.”

I was beginning to get nervous at what the consequences may be, and was slightly losing interest in the prank… but not enough to quit just yet. We found a window on the other side of the house. Randomly, it was open, only with a screen in the way. Jimmy carefully pried it out, and we slid quietly inside like one big shadow. Jimmy’s friend pulled out three ski masks and said “Here, you guys better take these just in case.” We all put them on immediately. We crept around searching for Derekson’s bathroom, which we found at the end of the hall, just adjacent to his bedroom. The walls were so hollow, that we could hear him sawing logs with a chainsaw. I don’t know how his wife sleeps at night.

“Alright, you guys ready?” I asked.

“Yeah, dude. Let’s go.” Jimmy said right back. We tip-toed into the bathroom as quietly as possible, I don’t recall making a single bit of racket. Jimmy’s friend pulled the red dye from his pocket and handed it to Jimmy as if it were a weapon of mass destruction. Jimmy messed with the showerhead and successfully sabotaged it.

“Mission accomplished!” Jimmy quietly exclaimed, “Now we just wait for the fun.” Jimmy’s foot hit the tub on accident. All of a sudden, from Derekson’s room we heard “What the Hell was that?!” causing us all to freak out.

“Oh crap!” I loudly whispered, “What are we going to do? We’re bound to be caught now!”

“Dude we need to just hurry on out.” Jimmy replied, with a promising look in his face. “I bet if we just creep out of here really quickly, he won’t see us. Let’s go!”

We followed Jimmy to the living room window that we broke into; luckily it was out of site from Derekson’s room and bathroom, so we jumped out. Derekson went into his bathroom and turned on the light, only to find out that nothing was wrong... or at least looked wrong. Derekson went back into his bedroom, to which he immediately collapsed onto his bed and started to go Leatherface on a rainforest.

“Oh my God, that was so close.” I said, taking off my ski-mask and wiping my sweat-drenched forehead.

“Alright,” Jimmy brandishing his demonic smirk, “We’ll check back here at about 6 o’clock. I’m not sure if Derekson gets up around then, but it’s worth waiting and seeing this awesome prank unfold.” We all agreed, and drove back to my place, where we played video games for the remaining hours.


After about 5 hours of non-stop, Halo-infected action, we returned to Derekson’s house of pain, parking houses away, just in case he sees my car. We all waited outside his bathroom window for the madness to arrive. Moments later, we hear a door open. Jimmy jabbed me, covering his face and trying not to burst into laughter, “Dude, this is gonna be so epic.”

“More like epic fail.” I said sarcastically, causing Jimmy to lose his grin for a second. I knew it was going to be great, though. It was gonna be the prank of the century.

Derekson stepped into his shower and turned it on, making a loud screech from the rusty old metal. The water started trickling down, but our silent laughter overpowered it. Seconds later, Derekson belted out an ear-shattering, blood-curdling scream. Jimmy pounded his fists in the ground with uproarious laughter. Jimmy’s friend was laughing just as loud. I laughed quite hard as well, but that didn’t last long. Derekson reared his bald, ugly, blood-red head out of his window. He looked like the guy whose skin came off in the beginning of Hellraiser. We all stared blankly at his face for about 5 seconds, which followed by even more gut-busting laughter.

“YOU!” Derekson yelled furiously, pointing at us with his skinny, ice-pick-like finger, “You did this! I’ll kill ya! I’ll kill all of ya!” Good thing we were all wearing our ski-masks, he’ll probably forget our physical features anyway with his senility. We bolted like rabbits, listening to the constant shouting of “You’re dead! You’re all dead!” We got to the car and I burnt out as if I were in a drag race. We were all silent after getting in the car… for about 5 seconds. You can figure out what happens next.

We reached my house after another 3 miles of non-stop laugher. We talked about how great the experience was, until relentlessly crashing on my basement floor.


Monday hit, and everything seemed pretty fine. No one even noticed us… pretty much like every other day at school. That alone struck me that no one knew it was us that turned Derekson into a tomato. After talking to some of our friends, we found out they haven’t seen Derekson all day. I talked to a teacher of mine, Mr. McCall, and he explained the reason no one has seen Derekson all day.

“His skin was kind of… red. Some of the teachers couldn’t handle their inner child and they started laughing like hyenas. I mean the guy looked like Freddy Krueger for God’s sake. He couldn’t stand it, so he went home.” I replied, “Oh, uh, that sucks. Maybe he spent too much time in the tanning bed.” I said with a smirk.

We were never caught. I know, how cliché of an ending, but that’s what happened. Thought it would be a more exciting (and not to mention school-appropriate) substitute for one of my getaway stories. Anyway, the moral of the story is, “Don’t screw around with students who have revenge ideas from random movies like ‘Big Fat Liar.’”