THE SPAWNS

Chapter VII—Jayden

Stop Humping the Lamp Pole

© DarknessAndLight

I slapped Cole on the back of the head for about the tenth time in five minutes and repeated, “Cole, for Christ sake, put your seatbelt on!”

            When did Cole ever listen to what I asked though? “NO,” he shouted still sitting completely on the wrong side, holding on to his seat and facing the back of the car. “So, Maika, did you kiss any girls,” he asked in a sing-song voice.

            I looked in the rear-view mirror just in time to see her roll her eyes at him. “No I didn’t.”

            “Are you suuuuure,” the idiot pressed again, still using the same ridiculous tone.

            It was in moment like these that I really wondered why I was friends with him, especially if he got me arrested.

            “Yes Cole, I’m sure,” Maika repeated her voice clearly amused. Of course she hadn’t been living with him, basically twenty four seven, for the past few months, so it was still new and refreshing for her to have him acting like the idiot he was. It just made me tense.

            “God dammit Cole!” I hissed when he tried to pretty much reach over his seat from the top, to slap Maika on top of her head, and grabbed him by the back of his shirt, trying to get him to sit down already. “Would you sit like a normal human being and put your damn seatbelt on?”

            I might freak out a bit when I was driving. I had my parents to thank for that seeing my uncle, who I was named after, had died in a car accident, so driving with them had taught me paranoia, and my paranoia was always at its highest when Cole was in the passenger seat.

            And of course, Cole was Cole so instead of just sitting down, he crawled onto the backseat with the girls before I could stop him and laid on their laps, head on Belly and feet on Maika. “Jay-Jay-Poo, shoo you party pooper!” Cole yelled trying to put his feet in my face. Somehow his shoes were gone and I had his sock dangerously close to my mouth.

            Stinking bastard!

            “GOD DAMMIT!” I punched his feet away. “Cole, fuck you! Would someone restrain the dumb prick until we get to the sign,” I asked, almost desperately while Cole laughed like a maniac.

            I should change friends…

            Luckily, Maika grabbed his legs, trapping them between her own effectively stopping the kicking and feet-dangerously-close-to-my-face issue.

            Victory wasn’t that easy though, and he was still trashing. “Belly, pull his hair our something that ought to shut him up,” I whined while my sister gave me a “are you insane” look.

            I saw her look down at Cole, who still had his head on her lap but was trashing a little bit less now.

            “If you do it are you ready to live with the consequences,” Cole inquired mischievously.

            “Cole, leave my little sister alone,” I groaned.

            “You know nothing, Jon Snow,” Cole exclaimed and managed to wiggle out of Maika’s grasp, his feet going automatically in my face. And god dammit, would he ever drop that Jon Snow deal, the idiot. “What are your vows again? Father no child, take no wife, or as the Spartans Cheerleaders in SNL say, “Sex can wait, masturbate”? You know nothing, Jon Snow,” he laughed mischievously.

            “Alright, that’s it!” I stepped brusquely on the brake, the car coming to a sudden stop. That got surprised shrieks from everyone.

            I put the car in park, unbuckled my seatbelt, stepped out of the car, opened the back door and pulled Cole out by the feet.

            By then Cole was pretty much just laughing hysterically.

            “I’m done, you drive,” I announced pushing him towards the driver’s seat.

            “Well that took you long enough,” he kept laughing and I went around the car to get to the passenger’s seat.

            When I closed the door beside me, Maika wrapped her arms around the seat—and me—leaning her chin against it. “Aw, don’t sulk already Cutie, the night is still young.”

            “It’s his fault,” I groaned, crossing my arms over my chest, “he knows how I freak when I drive and he acts like a three year old.”

            “Who sounds like a three year old now,” Cole chuckled.

            “I swear to god I will push you out of the car.”

            “Stop being babies, both of you,” Lilibeth chastised us, “we’re just a couple miles from the sign now, no point in arguing.”

            Of course, my little sister had a point. Even though she was the youngest of the bunch, usually she was the least immature. Well, anyone was more mature than Cole, obviously.

            “I need to buy some stuff though. We’ll need to make a pit stop,” Cole informed us.

            I frowned. “What stuff?”

            We had everything we needed… I didn’t think we had forgotten anything.

            He shrugged. “Just stuff”

            “Will a Mini-Mart do,” Mai asked, “because there’s one if you turn left at the next stop.”

            “Perfect,” Cole grinned, and I knew this grin, my friend was up to no good.

            I should have slept more. Even though I could live on very little sleep, I barely had gotten any lately with the end of the semester.

            I was still way too on edge and I wanted to enjoy the night out with my little family. Some people said there was the family that was given to you and the one you made for yourself and the three musketeers in the car with me were that family I had made for myself—even though one was actually really part of my family. I just had too many things on my mind that really didn’t need to be there anymore. I shouldn’t be worrying about how I had done on my last tests and such; there was nothing I could do about them anymore. I guess I just generally stressed for no reason.

             Cole parked in front of the Mini-Mart and without telling us what he was getting, went straight inside it, alone.

            “What do you think he’s buying in there,” Maika asked, squishing her face against the window.

            “I’m not sure I even want to know,” I snorted.

            A few minutes later, Cole walked out, a big grin plastered on his face and a plastic bag in his hand.

            “Man, you guys should have seen the dude face at the cash,” he said after closing the door beside him. “If I had bought toilet paper I bet Jayden’s precious hair that he would have called the cops.”

            I narrowed my eyes. “My what?”

            Cole snorted, rolling his eyes. “Oh don’t act like an idiot; you know you worship your hair.”

            “I don’t,” I exclaimed, a bit pissed now.

            Again, he rolled his eyes. “Please, you take an eternity to arrange it or whatever it is you do,” he said and tried to ruffled them but I backed away form his hand before he could touch me.

            “Well at least I don’t have a dead cat on top of my head,” I mumbled.

            Cole shook his head and meowed. “Oh the cat is very alive.”

            That’s when Maika decided to slap both of us on the back of the head. It made Lilibeth giggle. “Hey, Charlie Brown and Lucy, why don’t you two stop bickering and tell us what you bought?”

            “I want to be Lucy! Imagine Jayden bald,” Cole laughed, again like some kind of villain in a cheap movie.

            Good thing Maika wasn’t amused anymore. Good, she was finally in the “oh that’s right Cole has an extremely short attention spam and you shouldn’t be encouraging him” mode. “Cole, what’s in the bag?”

            “Candies, water, eggs, milk, tuna fish, molasses,” he enumerated.

            I raised my hand to stop him. “Wait what?”

            “Candies, water, eggs, milk, tuna fish, molasses,” he repeated. “I thought about vinegar but then you can use vinegar to clean the eggs so I decided against it.”

            What kind of weird, weird friend do I have?

            “Why the hell did you buy tuna fish and molasses? And whose house are we egging,” Maika demanded, because why else do you buy eggs, obviously.

            “We are not egging anyone’s houses. We’re egging a car,” Cole answered and started driving away “And let the tuna fish rot under the seat and spill the molasses over it.”

            Well, I had to give it to him that was kind of ingenious…

            “And who pissed you off enough to earn this,” Maika laughed.

            “Steven Anderson.”

            Oh lord, I should have guessed that one…

            “Who’s that,” she asked, while I looked back at Lilibeth to see if she was okay. She had turned completely still.

            “Do you want to tell her Beth or you’d rather I did,” Cole asked in a sardonic tone.

            Maika frowned. “Wait I’ve heard that name before?”

            “The Matrix,” Cole offered, and I rolled my eyes.

            “No, my dads…”

            “Well from what I understood Steven’s dad was a total douche to one of your dad,” Cole informed her. Clark Anderson, I think…

            “He used to be friend with our dad when they were in High School,” I added.

            “Not mine though, mine was too awesome for him,” Cole felt the need to mention.

            “Either way when his father learned your dad was gay he made fun of him all the time,” I continued. Some people were real jerks sometimes. What was the point in making fun of someone you had been friends with just because they were attracted to certain people? Who cared who you loved, as long as it wasn’t a goat or something?

            Draw the line at goat, Elton John had said, I think…

            “And Mama hates his mom too,” Belly said softly.

            I had the sudden need to just change subject and hold my little sister in my arms and tell her everything would be alright. She always had such a soft voice, it made her sound so vulnerable, it broke my heart. I wished I could protect her from everything…

            “What’s her name,” Maika inquired.

            “Stacey,” Lilibeth told her, still using her quiet voice.

            Maika shrugged. “Never heard of her.”

            “Apparently she was a hoe back in High School,” Cole pitched in and now he was scowling. I think the Lili’s little voice was hitting him too.

            Maybe I shouldn’t have told all this stuff to Cole… Sometimes he played the big brother part more extremely than I did. Cole never had any younger siblings and Belly was probably the closest thing he had to a little sister. He was always just as protective towards her as me. It was nice to have a friend that cared about your family this much but sometimes he went just a little bit over the top.

            Like now…

            “So a douche and a hoe, nice, that doesn’t explain why we’re egging and stink bombing their son’s car.”

            Cole was driving the car just a bit faster now, I realized. And he looked pissed. Yeah, I probably shouldn’t have told him all of this… Losing so many unborn brothers and sisters made him that much prone to protecting whatever remnants he had now. “He’s in Beth’s class and he’s always after her.”

            “Not always,” Lili whispered.

            Cole laughed without humour. Oh yes, definitely pissed. “Last day of school he filled your locker with trash.”

            And I was definitely pissed too to be honest… That dude deserved whatever Cole had planned.

            “Good thing it was the last day, that means I change lockers,” Lilibeth replied, her voice stronger, her gaze more set.

            “He keeps calling you names because you’re not a hoe like his mom,” Cole pointed out.

            Lilibeth was now crossing her arms over her chest, pouting a bit. “I don’t care about what he thinks, it doesn’t matter.”

            “Well it matters to me. No one has the right to be a jerk to you,” Cole argued.

            It was kind of amusing to see them bickering like this to be honest. Cole acted like an overprotective brother; basically he was filling my shoes. I didn’t have too much of a problem with that, I agreed with Cole’s idea, I would probably find a way to beat up the kid another time too, and either way, I didn’t really want to argue with Belly. Cole could do it.

            “How did you even get his address,” she exclaimed.

            “I’m resourceful,” Cole grinned.

            “And let’s drop the subject. I see a sign that is in desperate need of being vandalised up ahead,” Maika pointed up ahead.

            This effectively shut everyone up. The last time we had practice our extracurricular nocturnal activity of the graffiti kind, it was before the snow had fell, so I don’t think we could really help feeling a little giddy.

            We had picked our unlawful pastime because of our fathers. My dad and Cole’s father had made a lot of graffiti over the year and as far as I knew, they were still doing some from time to time. They were the ones that had actually showed us how to do it. It had been Cole’s tenth birthday present.

            Now, it had turned into a sort of competition. Our father’s work of art had been graded by other street artists over the year, and we had kind of taken the bad habit of finding the sign they had painted on years ago, and re-doing something with them, most of the time, better, trying to get better grades then them. It looked good for us so far, partly all thanks to Lilibeth. She had a touch for details that not a lot of artist could recreate. Nobody painted eyes or hair like her, or played with simplistic lighting that made the painting all that more unique. What could I say, my sister had a gift. Often she would just let us do the most of the work and then she would add her little touch here and there and it would transformed what we had been doing into a true work of art.

            Cole parked my car in a dirt road by the side of the main one and we all got out of the car, Cole and I bringing the black duffle bags on our backs.

            “Mai, you still have the drawing,” I inquired as we made our way towards the sign on the unwelcoming area. It looked like it had been abandoned for years.

            “Yes, but don’t worry, it’s all perfectly memorized in my head,” she answered cheerfully.

            If Belly worked on the last minute details, Mai was the one that did the rough first draft, the main guiding lines. Maika wasn’t exactly as artistic as the rest of us; she wasn’t bad, she was just better at reproduction than at actually inventing the design. She had good ideas but actually recreating them for real was harder for her. Cole and I usually took care of making the first plans, and Maika would reproduce them perfectly.

            “Come on guys, cheer up. We’re up to mischief not on our way to an execution,” Cole whined and then dropped the bag he had been carrying and started to run around in circles like a lunatic.

            We all laughed at first but then he got to a lamp pole and tried to climb on it and it wasn’t funny to me anymore, especially since I was the one who had picked up is bag from the group and Maika was just screaming at him “Come on Caesar, free the monkeys.”

            “Don’t encourage him” I grumbled.

            “We should get a monkey as a pet,” she trailed thoughtfully, an amused smile on her face, her gaze glued on the monkey-man.

            He was going to break his neck. Acting like a sane person was usually too much to ask from Cole.

            I looked back and Lilibeth was standing behind me, her hands hidden in the pockets of her black hoodie, obviously trying to keep from grinning at the funny sight.

            “Having a pet monkey is like naming a time bomb Bobo.” I informed Maika, smiling a bit. “That’s because monkeys attack if you make eye contact with them. Monkeys also attack when you’re not looking at them. And monkeys attack because it’s 3 pm and something has to bleed and scream. And should you ever try to give it a tutu, leash or 8 feet high protective concrete barrier, be prepared to learn what the phrase “hell on earth” truly means.”

            Maika shook her head at me, laughing. “You should seriously stop wasting your time on the internet, I already read that somewhere.”

            “I thought it was worth being mentioned,” I grinned back.

            Maika laughed again and then I huffed in annoyance, dropping the bags on the ground, groaning in disapproval as I looked at my best friend. “COLE! Stop humping the lamp pole!”

            “NO!” he answered in a baby-in-the-no-phase kind of tone.

            I groaned again, running my fingers through my hair. “God dammit Cole!”

            Luckily, he let go of the lamp pole but he was running again.

            “Weeeeeee,” Cole started to shout, running around with his hand stretch on both side of him, like he was an airplane.

            Lilibeth suddenly sighed heavily beside me and stepped forward, walking towards Cole. “Cole, we get it, you’re an idiot that can do whatever he wants,” she stated. “We’ll egg Steve’s stupid car if that’s what you want, but just pick up your bag and stop running around before you get the cops on us.”

            Maika bumped her shoulder against mine. “Is it just me or does he act younger than her?”

            I shook my head, but the corners of my lips were still up. “Yeah, she should be the nineteen year old and he should be the fifteen year old one.”

            At least Belly got through to him and he walked back to us, though still grinning like a moron and picked up his bag.

            “Jay-Jay-Poo,” Cole whined beside me and I huffed in annoyance at the stupid nickname. “What crawled up your butt and died?”

            I chocked on air. “Excuse me, what?”

            “You’re killing my enthusiasm,” he explained.

            “You’re acting like a three year old!”

            “And you’re supposed to be my three year old partner in crime, not my fugging nanny.” I rolled my eyes “Three, two, one, NINJA!” he shouted quickly and because he was right and I was supposed to be his partner in crime and because this was Cole, my best friend and whatever I said, I was never truly deeply annoyed by him, I dropped my bag and struck a ninja pose and Cole did too and stood with one leg up and both hands in the air mimicking claws like some kind of awkward cat. I didn’t even have time to laugh at him and he had already slapped my hand. And then he was slapping me upside the head which wasn’t in the rules so I tried to throw a punch back at him and before I knew it we were fighting each other playfully, laughing and trying to punch the other one and throwing each other on the ground.

            Maika quickly grabbed both of us by the back of our shirts before we could do any kind of damaged, which I knew Cole could; he had been traveling too much in Asian countries because his parents loved it there and he had picked up quite a few fighting tricks that I didn’t wish to be on the receiving hand from. His many belts in different martial arts weren’t heart-warming either.

            We kept laughing and pushing each other all the way to the sign, but when we finally in front of it, everybody stopped fooling around. We needed to act as fast as we could in order to not get caught.

            We had our act down to a T.

            We quickly climbed up the metal latter in the side, our bags on our back. Then Maika swiftly traced the main lines to guide us and Cole and I followed swift beside her. At one point, I hissed her on my back so she could to the lines and colors on the top of the sign, and then Belly stepped forward and added her magical touch.

            The whole thing took us a lot less than an hour.

            We didn’t stay too long to enjoy our new masterpiece and quickly left the crime scene, practically running to the car.

            Cole went straight for the driving side and I let him. Honestly, I knew how much he loved my car. His was pretty much a dump to be honest. He had an old Dodge Challenger he always repeated he was going to restore and make all pretty but the thing was still a dump.

            Either way I didn’t have any problem with him driving, I had problem with being stuck with him in a car in general. The girls were still sitting in the back and Maika was asking Lilibeth about her dancing classes and how it was going but the idiot driving beside me started to sing “I Will Always Love You” by Whitney Houston and every time he hit a high pitch note—which was way too often—he hit me in the face.

            “I had enough of this,” I said at once, unbuckling my seatbelt. “Belly, switch seat with me.”

            Lilibeth frowned in confusion but obeyed.

            Unlike Maika and me, Cole wouldn’t hit Belly. He might actually shut the hell up.

            “Missing me Mister Eaton,” Maika smirked when I settled in my new seat.

            “More like tired of getting slapped in the face,” I snorted.

            “Start acting like a lady and I won’t have to slap you in the face like a stubborn hooker,” Cole shouted for my benefit but I ignored him.

            “So, enjoying your night so far,” I wondered out loud.

            “We committed a felony and we’re about to commit one more.” Maika smirked. “We plastered a sign with a completely douche politician that pretty much hates environment looking like a big breasted mermaid killing a seal, and the night is still young. I think we’re getting somewhere.”

            I laughed at her answer, ruffling her hair.

            “It’s about to get better, I got you sour watermelon candies,” Cole announced and threw her a bag. Maika squealed happily. He also threw M&M’s right in my face and gave Belly one of those big ring candies. She put it on her index finger but she barely had time to get half way throw it and Cole was taking her hand biting a big chunk off the candy. Belly glared at him, but then kept on eating it.

            “This is how you get cooties,” I pointed out, mouth full, happily eating my M&M’s. Whenever we had any at home, mom would hide them from us so I enjoyed having the entire bag for myself.

            “You might want to swallow first Jay-Jay-Poo,” Cole grinned back at me.

            “Somehow I think I should be offended by this remark,” I pointed out, grinning back too.

            “Be offended later, we have a car to destroy,” he announced and parked by the side of the road. “His house is about a block away.”

            At first, Lilibeth didn’t want to come with us, but Cole threatened to carry her on his back so she reluctantly followed, though she didn’t want to help with anything.

            We silently made our way to the house. I had the eggs, Cole the tuna and Maika the molasses. We opened the car doors first; happy they weren’t locked and put the molasses on the seats and the tuna carefully hidden under them. We were careful when closing the door, not to make any noise to not wake up or alert anyone.

            When we got to the egg part though, we split up the dozen in three and threw the four eggs each on the car at the same time and ran the crap away the second after heading straight for the car.

            “If we get in trouble because of this, I’m never talking with you guys again,” Belly pouted when we were driving away.

            “Come on, don’t be mad,” I told her. “He’s a jerk and he deserved it.”

            “I still don’t think this is going to help my cause,” she argued, not looking back at me.

            “But it made me feel better,” Cole pitched in.

            “And when he fills my locker with fish, molasses and eggs, will you still feel better,” she asked him challengingly.  

            Okay, maybe we hadn’t thoroughly thought about this…

            It was often like this with Cole. He had “ingenious” ideas that seemed fun to begin with, or when they were said in the comfort of your home, but once he was actually doing them, or after they were done, he didn’t look so ingenious anymore. And most of the time I followed his ingenious lead. Our parents hadn’t called us the two monsters for no reason.

            We drove back to Cole’s house eating our candy in silence. I felt bad now. The eggs would have time to dry on Steven’s car and they would be pretty damn hard to get off. The broken eggshell could scratch the paint job… well honestly, with the dozen eggs we had thrown he’s probably need a whole new paint job on his car… If he figured out Lilibeth had something to do with it he would probably retaliate.

            Best for Belly if he was as stupid as he sounded and didn’t figure it out…

            When we arrived at Cole house though, the mood shifted because of what was in store next. It was past one in the morning now and it was dark.

            Cole’s rooftop was decorated with little lights and obstacles everywhere for our water balloon fights which were a tradition after any kind of night mischief. It was the only seemingly cliché thing we did and we always had a blast with it.

            We got in his family’s apartment first, filling up balloons with water, trying not to make too much sound to wake up his parents—though Cole said they were probably too busy bumping uglies to care. We put food colouring in the balloons, to make even more of a mess because we were brilliant that way.

            And then we made our way to the roof.

            And all hell broke loose.

            Like a time bomb named Bobo.

_____________________________

A/N : I know I had mentioned that I would upload the next chapter faster than the last one, but when have I ever done what I said I was supposed to? lol

I hope you enjoyed this chapter, it's longer than the other ones, because from now on, they're all going to be approximately this length. 

Next chapter will be in Cole's POV and the choice for the titles are :

1) A Particularly Enjoyable Feeling

OR

2) Fighting Against Sudden Bursts of Laugher

OR

3) Minus the Whole Beatles Thing

Again, I haven't finshed writing it, not like I used to, so the choices kind of suck. This time I'll really try to message you guys with more choices, or I might just add more here as I go. Either way, sorry about that...

By the way, if you rather have THIS chapter named : A Time Bomb Named Bobo" or "Draw the Line at Goat" do say so in your comments! lol

Now if you'll excuse me I have to write an essay on 'in what ways do Edgar Alan Poe in “The Masque of the Red Death” and Ambrose Bierce in “Chickamauga” provide ironic views of leadership and to what purpose' which is due by Friday! I'm sooooo screwed! lol