Jerome



Hey queer!" The boy looked over to have a school lunch tray thrown into his stuff. "What kind of weirdo are you? You're doing work even at lunch time!" My buddy Jess continued to shout at the boy.

Everyone was laughing and having a great time watching this kid being made fun of. Jess wasn't the kind of guy to make fun of someone personally. This kid was just being messed with. If someone really did grind his gears, he kicked their ass.

Same with me. My name is Rick. My buddy Jess and I are like brothers. We share common interests, like motorcycles, hunting, and causing trouble. Now I took the world a little bit more seriously than Jess.

I knew this because he was failing all his classes and caused more fights than he needed to. His hair and face were shaved, while I left my hair long and bit styled, and liked letting my five o'clock shadow show. I can't be ugly on the inside and the outside, can I? Anyways, I, on the other hand, only made fun for fun, and just tried not to get into too much trouble.

The kid was a total weirdo though. His name was Jerome. He was shorter than average, Latino, and dressed like a nerd. He was a nerd. All he did was draw crazy monsters and designs into his notebook. The notebook was bound in leather and the pages smelt like the dank side of a book store. I knew he wasn't doing work. He was probably drawing more crap into that stupid little diary.

I got close to him and noticed what he was drawing. A very beautiful girl with black, short hair and pale skin. She was wearing a black dress and the straps were slipping off over her shoulder, the way you strip a girl during foreplay. It held many disturbing features though. The girl's face was disgusted, like she had seen a high school nerd pick his nose. And her leg...half of her whole, thin, leg was being swallowed whole by a demonic looking tar monster. The monster was crouching down low and looking up at her as he was doing it.

"Look at this!" I said and snatched the book from his weak grasp.

I threw it to Jess and he laughed, covering his mouth as his eyes widened.

"You are a little freak, aren't you Jerome?! What kind of sick hentai is this?!"

He couldn't stop laughing. He passed the book around as people exchanged faces of disgust, laughter, and shock. Jerome gave me a look a horror, and then Jess a look of pure hatred. Jess didn't notice.

After school ended, I got in my chopper and revved up the engine by twisting back the handle. Jess preferred a faster, more modern model, like a sports motorcycle. "Hey, Rick!" Jess laughed "I found a place we can fight those other kids that were running their mouths today!"

Jess was about to continue when he noticed Jerome strut past, pushing his glasses up higher on his nose. He gave Jess that look again. The one that burned. He started drawing in his book again. This time, Jess noticed the look.

"That little asshole has to go making it personal now, does he?" Jess spit out his tobacco "Well we'll give him something personal."

Jess revved up his engine and slowly followed Jerome as he rode the bus home.

"Wait up Jess!" I called after him.

"This is a waste of our time! Leave him be!" Jess looked back at me and shrugged. He kept following him and I decided I had no choice but to go too.

We hard to park our motorcycles in the bushes on a dirt road where Jerome's bus stopped. He started to walk down the dirt road a long ways. This was a normal thing in the country, kids homes would be surrounded by a lot of land, and not many houses where a bus would have time to drive through to drop more people off, so it'd drop you off on closest road to it.

We followed in the tall, yellow grass, trying not to be seen. It took ten minutes before something came into view besides tall, yellow grass. A very short, wide, brown house. It wasn't painted and the separation of the wooden planks was clearly visible. There were no tires, gas cans, bottles, or anything in his yard like any other busy house. Not even a car. Was Jerome living alone? I thought.

We waited in the grass until he walked through his front door and leaves rushed out of his door, into the breeze. "Leaves in the house? What kind of lifestyle is this kid living?" I murmured. I noticed then, that they were torn up paper pages. Hundreds of them, floating out the crack in the door and a broken window.

It was four o'clock, so Jess decided we should get on and go inside already before it got dark. I went to the back door and tried to pick the lock with my set, but it was so weak that I just had to twist it hard with my hand. The door was to the living room. The walls were the same as the outside, plain wooden planks. No furniture. There was only a smile fire pit in the corner, and something in the center of the room. The sickening scene of...an exact replication of his drawing I saw in his notebook. A beautiful, pale, thin, girl in a black dress. Hair short. Shoulder strap down. Her face was pinned by safety pins to make a disgusted expression, artificially. The only difference was her whole leg was missing, not in the mouth of a monster.

There was a splatter of blood by her leg, but there was no blood trail, like the whole leg had disappeared, "What the hell!" I whispered.

Jess air heaved and coughed "We're going to kill this sick fuck!" Being the kind of people we were, I unsheathed my bowie knife, and Jess pulled out metal pipe.

"Split up," Jess said, "He probably heard us talking and gonna try and make a run for it."

I went on the room to the left, and Jess went down the hall to the right. The room I got was the kitchen. It looked like Jerome tried to play darts with kitchen knifes on the wall next to where I walked in. I heard animal noises coming from different cabinets on the walls, only little things, like a scratch or a squeak.

There was a different drawing on each cabinet. One drawing in particular had a mouse with needles instead of fur. No noise came from this cabinet. I decided not to look at any more. The kitchen stretched on for a while, only lit by candles. After walking down the blank stretch of knifes and drawings, I turned back and decided to look for Jess.

The first door was closed, and had a drawing of just a pile of mush, scribbled and messy. I moved on to the next door and twisted the handle. Inside, to my horror, I found Jess, tied up, his pipe on the ground. He had a noose around his neck, and the rope went out a window. This room had one window, blocked by a curtain, and a closet.

"What the hell happened Jess!"

I lifted up his head and noticed a drawing stuck to his chest. It was a perfect drawing of Jess, only with a noose around his neck, yanking his head off its body. I cut his hands free and noticed his hands were cut up badly.

I also noticed there was another rope tied to the rope holding his hands together, he couldn't get away when the rope was still around his hands. I took off my leather jacket for him to cover his hands, but as soon as I took it off, the rope started rapidly being pulled out the window.

Jess was being dragged by the neck to the window. Jess screamed and tried to grab onto something, but there was only the wooden floor. Jess's face turned red as the rope began pulling harder. I pulled back on the rope, having a game of tug of war with whatever was pulling on the other side of the window. Jess grabbed my knife from my sheath and cut his neck free.

"Thanks, brother." Jess cried.

We looked around at the walls. Thousands of little scribbled drawings covered the walls. From slit throats, to dismembered faces, there was no way of looking away from a violent image. Jess grabbed his pipe and opened the closet. He vomited. I took a look in and began to tremble, wiping the sweat from my hands onto my blue jeans.

The closet stretched into a basement, forward and downwards. The illustrations became reality in the basement. The bloodied bodies, the limbs separated. They were all down here. "You were this close to becoming one of his closet bodies!" I said in disgust. "We've got to get out of here" Jess breathed. We ran out of the house and looked around the yard for Jerome. He could easily duck down into the tall grass. He was nowhere to be found.

We decided to head back home and call the police. We got in our motorcycles, our minds forever ruined by what we had seen. I kept hearing a leaking noise from the gas tank and wondered if one of the tubes had got a leak. I looked at my gas meter and saw a scrap of paper taped on. There was a drawing off fire, and then an explosion. I bailed off of my chopper, but Jess only called back "What the hell is wrong with you?" before watching my chopper light on fire. It was a small and pathetic fire. However, when it would reach the gas can, my chopper would be toast. I got on the back of Jess's motorcycle and prayed we wouldn't see any more drawings hidden on us.