Toilet Paper Misery

I can't remember who came up with the idea to vandalize the house, but it seemed like a great one at the time. The neighbor's dog had chewed up our basketball, and retaliation was the only thing on our minds that summer night. After planning our intricate escape route, complete with climbing out a window for excitement's sake, we stood in the backyard trembling. Planning such a feat was the easy part. Actually going through with it on the other hand, now that was the real hurdle. After giving ourselves a pep-talk, we headed out into the night with our minds set on criminal acts.

As we ran through the back yard, the smell of fear and face-paint flooded our nostrils. The grass was wet with dew and our sneakers screamed warnings at us. The night was young and alive with noises that filled our imaginations with fear, and I began to sweat nervously. This was to be my first time breaking the law. High on adrenaline and fear, and carrying our pillowcases full of loot, we made our way into the front yard of the house.

All around us people slept, safely and unknowingly, in their beds. We had control and we felt like kings but the air was startlingly heavy. It was hard to breathe, choking us as our hearts began to beat fast with anticipation. I took a deep breath and stepped forward. The roll of toilet paper in my hand felt like a brick, but up it went as we held our breath, waiting for the collision.

It was eerily quiet as the toilet paper glided through the night sky and landed with a soft thud next to me. Our anxiety fading, we began to throw the toilet paper into the imposing pine trees surrounding us. It began to look beautiful, like a fresh fallen snow in mid-July. Clouds of the soft toilet paper shined in the midnight moon, glowing.

After several intense minutes of toilet papering, my younger sister decided to take things to the next level. She had secretly been carrying a single egg in her pocket. Before I could whisper a protest, I saw the little white bomb glide through the velvet sky and crack violently against a second floor window. A light flew on in one of the upstairs windows.

We were gone in a flash. Like shooting starts in the night sky, we took off down the street. After several minutes, we stopped in the middle of the street, panting and laughing at our narrow escape. Mid chuckle I turned behind me, hands on my knees, and saw a strange figure running towards us. "Weird," I thought. "Why is someone jogging this late at night?"

Before I could open my mouth, I heard the heart-stopping sound of a shotgun being cocked. Like the bullet coming out of the gun, I was off, vaguely aware of knocking my cousin to the ground. As I ran through the yards, I stopped only once, face-planting onto the hard ground courtesy of a croquet set. Bleeding and covered in mud, I broke into our screen door, breaking a finger on the way down. My sister and cousin fell on top of me in a trembling heap. We were safe but shell-shocked. The man had shot at us! We were convinced that we had only narrowly escaped death that night and our pounding hearts were near explosion.

We cried together that night in the basement, with our tears carving trails through the mixture of our leftover face-paint and fresh blood. The next day, between the Sheriff knocking on our door and having to clean up hundreds of pieces of wet toilet paper on the yard, we knew it was the end of our t.p.ing days.