First Drafts: Garfield's The Captain Now
Another First Draft for your reading pleasure!
This time no ones safe, not even Jon Arbuckle. Especially not Jon Arbuckle.
Jimmy hadn’t meant to kick the ball so hard. And if he hadn’t kicked the ball so hard it wouldn’t have landed in Mr. Arbuckle’s yard. And not just landed in the yard but rolled a bit farther until it disappeared behind the house. Jimmy and his neighborhood friends Brett and Gary stood in the street, just beyond Mr. Arbuckle’s property line. They stared silently, their breath coming in shallow and scared, at the dark house with wide eyes.
When Brett’s family had first moved into the neighborhood and he’d befriended Jimmy and Gary, the boys had pulled the classic new kid prank on Brett by convincing him that the Arbuckle house was haunted. It wasn’t hard to believe. The place looked practically abandoned. The grass was golden yellow and looked as though it would give a satisfying crunch if stepped on. There were places in the yard that looked as though they’d once been some kind of a flower bed or a garden, but now they were just vaguely moldy looking patches of dirt. The paint that covered the house seemed to have once been a bright and lively green but it had long since faded and peeled away from the old wooden siding beneath. What mostly sold the story though was the fact that the lights were never on in the house. Not in the morning or the evening, not when Jimmy’s father was going on one of his signature midnight walks, not when Gary’s mother rolled out of the driveway in the wee hours of the morning to go open the bakery.
Though the whole prank had fallen apart the day that Brett first saw Jon Arbuckle out in his front yard. At first the poor young boy had been convinced that he’d seen a ghost. He’d thought that in the stark light of day a whole ghost had just happened to wander out of the dark inside of the house and was aimlessly pacing the front yard. Brett had run as fast as his little legs would take him over to Jimmy’s house down the road, where he’d banged on the door as though his very life was at stake. It was, at a very minimum, alarming for Jimmy’s poor mother who had been enjoying her Saturday afternoon programs when Brett had practically tried to break down the door. Sweating and panting in sheer panic, Brett dived past her legs when she opened the door and beelined directly for Jimmy’s room. Jimmy was minding his own business, reading the newest edition of his favorite comic, when he had to lay it to the side and explain in soft, even tones to a boy past the point of fear that he had not, in fact, seen a ghost.
Brett had punched him in the stomach.
All that being said, though Brett now knew that the house was unkempt but did house a whole living human man, the place was still incredibly scary. All three boys found the house to be scary enough that not one of them immediately volunteered to run across the sidewalk, tip toe into the crunchy yard, and swipe the red kickball from behind it. In fact it was a full five minutes before any of the boys spoke up at all.
“I think since you were the one who kicked the ball… uh… maybe you should go get it, Jimmy.” Said Gary, without looking up to make eye contact with his friend.
“Yeah. Sounds fair.” Brett agreed.
“Well, it’s my ball and I say… that… maybe we just find a new game.”
“Oh come on Jimmy,” Brett said, a tinge of pity in his voice, “Your parents are gonna be so mad.”
“I’ll just say a car ran over it or something?”
“I guess then Brett’s gotta go get it. You were kicking to him and he missed it.” Gary said, yet again shifting the task to a person who was not himself.
“Or we just do what Jimmy said and pretend a car ran it over.” Brett said after a quick beat.
After that the boys decided to put the ball out of their minds and by unanimous vote moved their afternoon adventure to Gary’s house, where he had a whole platoon of toy soldiers.
However, when Jimmy returned home later that night with no ball his parents were savvy enough to sniff out his lie. Once he’d told them that the ball had fallen victim to a passing vehicle, Jimmy’s father had asked where the remnants of the ball had ended up. Not knowing exactly how a ball popped by a car tire would have behaved, Jimmy said that it burst into so many thousands of miniscule pieces that there could be no hope of recovery. The way his mother’s eyebrow raised at this answer tipped Jimmy off that maybe the story wasn’t quite as believable as he and Brett had thought.
Both of Jimmy’s parents remained silent, their expressions of disappointment doing all the necessary work of breaking through his almost non-existent defenses. He rarely misbehaved, and even when he did his whole heart was never really in it, so it never took more than a stern expression from his parents to crumble his resolve. The words came tumbling out in record time, only a good fifteen seconds from cocked eyebrow to haunted house meltdown. After a few minutes of rambling through an explanation that he, nor any of his friends, dared walk into Mr. Arbuckle's yard, his mother sighed and laid a hand on his shoulder.
“Dearest,” she said calmly, “Mr. Arbuckle is just a lonely old man. He may be a little strange, but that’s no reason to be frightened of him. I bet you he’s even very kind if you got to know him! In anycase, he’s not even likely to notice if you boys popped into the yard and grabbed your ball. He’s never really outside anyway.”
“Yeah but mom-” Jimmy began.
“Listen to your mother Jim.” His father said in his very best ‘this is the end of this conversation’ voice. “Now, even if you’ve got to wrangle the whole neighborhood crew to help you get it done, I expect to see that ball back in your hands by this time tomorrow. Understood?”
“Sure dad…” Jimmy said, unable to keep the undercurrent of fear from his voice.
He ran up to his bedroom, where he picked up the landline in his room and called the boys. They would meet outside Mr. Arbuckle's house at 10am and cross over the threshold together.
That night Jimmy had a nightmare in which the house grew arms and legs and then picked him up and deposited him inside its giant, gaping maw. He woke up sweating, his heart pounding, and in his eagerness to bring himself back into the real world, where a house was just a house, he stumbled out of bed and pulled back the curtains on his bedroom window. From his vantage point he could just barely see the front of the Arbuckle house, and to his horror, one of the windows glowed with light.
When Jimmy, Gary, and Brett met up outside the house the next morning the mood was tense. They nodded at each other, wordlessly, and then turned to look at the house just as they had the day before. Jimmy thought it best not to mention what he’d dreamt or seen the night before. If he wanted his friends to take on this journey with him, he couldn’t have them ducking out at the last minute because he’d had a ridiculous dream or because a guy had turned on the lights in his own house. Granted, possibly for the first time ever.
He breathed in deeply and looked at his neighborhood crew, tilting his head slightly towards the house. Gary and Brett each nodded slightly, Brett even conjuring up a small smile, and both breathed in deeply as well. It was as though all three of them thought if they just held their breath for the short sprint to the ball and back, that Mr. Arbuckle definitely wouldn’t notice them. Jimmy took the first step over the property line, but Brett and Gary were quickly right behind him and the three boys took off across the lawn.
The crunch of the dry grass under their feet seemed to be as loud as thunder as their heart beats thudded in their ears and the wind rushed past their faces. To each boy it seemed as if they were moving so fast but covering no ground, and they were making more noise than they’d ever made in their whole lives. As they finally cleared the front of the house and turned the corner expecting to see the red kickball sitting untouched in the backyard, Jimmy came to a complete stop, causing Gary to run into him.
“Where is it?” Jimmy whispered urgently, the fear not creeping but spilling into his voice. The blood drained from Brett’s face as he realized they weren’t about to scoop up their toy and turn right back around. Gary shrugged his shoulders with so much intensity that the gesture itself could have lifted his head clean off his neck. None of the boys were holding their breath anymore.
“Looking for your ball kids?” A voice croaked from the direction of the house. Brett looked like he was going to start crying and Gary’s breath started to come in short, sharp gasps. Jimmy looked up to the back porch of the house to see that the door was open. No one was standing there, the voice must have come from further inside. He took another deep breath.
“Yes? Sir?” He said, his voice wavering with nervous energy.
“Come inside.” The voice croaked again.
Jimmy looked at his companions to find Brett shaking his head ‘no’, his eyes practically bulging out of his head, as Gary continued to hyperventilate. Reaching out his hand, Jimmy took Brett’s in his own and inclined his head toward Gary, so Brett reached out to grab Gary’s hand. The three of them were in it already, it was time to see this thing through. Even though they had already been found out, they couldn’t help but tip toe up the porch steps as though they were trying not to be heard.
In the front of the line, Jimmy could see into the dark house through the door. It was hard to make out what was inside, as the curtains were drawn and the lights were off as usual. He thought he could barely see that the door led them straight into the kitchen, but there wasn’t anyone in that room.
The boys entered the kitchen and immediately their hands flew up to their noses. It smelled like meat and fruit, and cat poop. The stench had a sweet tinge to it that made it even more potent. All the surfaces were covered in food scraps and the garbage can was piled high with what looked like used up boxes of frozen lasagna.
“In here.” Directed the mysterious voice. The trio, distracted by the smell and the general disarray in the kitchen, had almost forgotten about Mr. Arbuckle. The noise caused Brett to shriek and jump, white the hairs on Jimmy’s arms stood at attention. The voice seemed to be coming from the adjoining room, so he pulled his friends in that direction.
The room was so dark it took a moment for their eyes to adjust. The first thing they saw was Mr. Arbuckle, sitting in a dilapidated armchair in the center of the room. Then they saw the cat. It was a huge orange tabby cat, and it sat right in Mr. Arbuckle's lap. And finally, Jimmy spotted his ball sitting at the man’s feet. Surprisingly, it was Brett that found the courage to speak first.
“Hello Mr. Arbuckle, sir. We’re very sorry to disturb you. We just wanted to get Jimmy’s ball, that’s it.” The words came out quickly, as though Brett was afraid if they didn’t come out fast enough they wouldn’t come out at all.
Jon Arbuckle sat completely still, staring straight forward at nothing in particular, his eyes unfocused, just as they were whenever one of his neighbors happened to see him wandering the yard. He said nothing at all.
“That’s a very nice cat you have there sir.” Said Jimmy, choking out the sentence past his fear.
Again, Mr. Arbuckle sat and stared as though he didn’t know the children were there at all, as though he didn’t see them, as though he could not hear them. Though, at the mention of the cat, his ears perked up and he stood from his comfortable resting place on Jon’s lap. Stretching out his legs one by one, the cat hopped, quite nimbly for an animal of its size, up onto his owner's shoulder. There the cat sat staring at the boys with more attention than his human counterpart.
Silently, and incredibly slowly, Jimmy crept forward towards his ball. He could hear Gary’s breath quickening as it was practically the only noise in the room. As he got closer he could see Mr. Arbuckle and his pet better. The cat raised one of his paws to the young boy as if to say ‘watch this’, and then touched the paw to the back of Jon Arbuckle’s neck. With a sickening squelch, the cat's paw passed through a flimsy layer of skin and into the base of his owner's head. It was as if the lights in Jon’s brain had been turned on, life entered his eyes as a quick smile glided over his features and he turned his newfound attention toward the boy at his feet, picking up his ball.
“Have you brought me a treat?” Said the same croaking voice that had coaxed them into the house.
Feeling absolutely paralyzed as their brains tried to process what was happening before them, the boys found themselves holding their breath again.
“I like my lasagna with a very special ingredient.” The voice said again, and though it was Jon Arbuckle's mouth that moved, they knew who was really speaking to them. Suddenly, Mr. Arbuckle's body shot up from the chair it sat in.
It was Gary’s blood curdling scream that snapped them out of their states of shock and into action. Jimmy picked up the ball from the floor and launched it at the tabby cat with all the strength he could muster. The ball hit the cat square in the face, and knocked him off of his owner’s shoulder. As his paw came free of Jon’s flesh with a smack, Mr. Arbuckle’s body went slack and fell towards the floor. The ball ricocheted off of the cat and came back towards the boys where Brett jumped up and snatched it out of the air.
He turned towards the others and screamed at the top of his lungs, “RUN!”
The trio tore through the kitchen, out of the back door of the house, through the yard, and down the street where they ripped open the door to Jimmy’s house and slammed it shut behind them. Gary reached up and slid the dead bolt into place, and all three boys slumped to the floor, eyes wide, breath ragged. Jimmy’s mother turned away from her afternoon program for just long enough to see the red kickball clutched in Brett’s arms.
“Well, that wasn’t so hard, was it?”