Story #5

All it took was that one bite. He should’ve known, he had seen it happen on TV all the time, of course it was bound to happen to him.

It started out like a regular Thursday; there was a warm and sunny with a slight breeze blowing through the neighborhood when Morgan got home from school that day. Bruno bounded in from the doggy door to greet him. After giving him a thorough rubdown, Morgan looked at the clock, he had exactly forty five minutes before his mom came home from work. Plopping himself down on his usual sofa cushion, Morgan reflexively reached for the remote and casually entered the “secret” code his parents put on the TV to deter their son from watching without their permission. Morgan shook his head, remembering back to when he had managed to break the code within the first ten minutes of trying the time when his parents first installed the thing last year. He didn’t really care if his grades weren’t as good as his parents wanted them to be. Not watching TV wasn’t going to miraculously make him a valedictorian like they had both been in high school. They were ridiculous.

Flipping through the channels for something good to watch he passed those daytime TV shows like Oprah, Maury and Tyra. What was with this lame shit anyway? He flipped to truTV where they were showing some of the “Most Outrageous” footage. They showed boys getting pelted by paintballs, a drunk man jumping off of a wall, anddaredevil kid trying to surf off his roof on an ironing board. After the boy fell off the roof and the board inevitably landed on top the boy’s private parts, the show went to a commercial break. Laughing aloud about the stupidity of the attempted stunts, Morgan cracked his knuckles as he waited for the show to return.

A rumbling came from his stomach, time for his afternoon snack. Morgan got up and jogged past to the cabinet that his mom always stocked with healthy after school snacks to the cabinet where they kept their extra packs of napkins and paper plates for parties. Reaching to the back left corner he grabbed his shoebox of junk food. Lucky for him he still had his licorice candy, pack of chocolate chip cookies, old school warheads that he saved for special occasions. Today he felt like gushers. It was that absurd commercial that did it too. He grabbed a pack and dashed back to the couch before he could miss more outrageous footage of dumb people doing dumber things. He tore open the pack of gushers and continued watching. Bruno whimpered longingly.

“No pal,” Morgan said, his eyes not moving from the television screen. “You shouldn’t eat these.”
Now they were showing some lady starting a fight in a pizza parlor with the guy in front of her. He had missed the start of this clip so he didn’t really know why this fight started, but still to get worked up about a pizza. Some people. He chuckled to himself and popped a gusher into his mouth. Mm mm good. Morgan vaguely noticed that this Gusher had a weird twang to it, it made his whole mouth tingle but he was so sucked into the show that he didn’t notice anything. Not until Bruno started barking at him.

“Calm down, shh. I’ll take you for a walk later.”

Bruno didn’t stop barking.

“Fine,” Morgan sighed and looked down at the dog, “What is it?”

But as he tilted his head downward to see his dog better, his chin fell his chest. What the fuck!? His eyes were wide open, adrenaline pulsing through his body. His head was very much heavier than normal, he reached up touch it and pulled his hand back in surprise. The sides of his face were smooth and wider than normal as they curved upward and away. He turned off the TV and ran over to it, his breathing short and quick. In the dark television set he could see a huge slice of watermelon with eyes, nose and a mouth on its front stared back at him. A whole stream of words came spilling from his mouth that his mother would ground him for saying right now if she could hear him now. Hah! She would scream and run for cover if she saw him now. He smiled to himself, this situation could have its advantages. Not only would he be the cool kid at school, but his mom, oh boy, is she going to have a cow. Only twenty more minutes. He stroked Bruno’s head and flipped the television on again. His mom would have bigger things to fuss about rather than his television watching.