By Ed Staskus
“Mom’s out of town, so who’s up for pizza tonight?”
“I love pizza,” Oliver said. “Even when I’m eating it I’m still wishing I was eating it. Pepperoni, please.”
“Veggie with the works,” Emma said.
Emma had declared herself a vegetarian the day before, declaring that killing animals to get their fur and hides was odious.
“What does that mean?” her brother asked.
“Odious, like odor, like your pits.”
Oliver made a mental note. He was going to show her who knew something about odors. He would stink up her bedroom. Maybe he could find a skunk somewhere and convince it to spray the room when she wasn’t looking. The only problem about that was, she was always looking.
“We can’t have both,” Oliver said. “Since I said it first, it has to be pepperoni.”
“I’ll show you what it has to be, you flesh eater. Everybody thinks if they eat meat they will become strong as an ox. They forget that ox’s live on grass. They don’t eat hamburgers. It would be like eating yourself.”
“That’s gross!”
“All right, kids, settle down,” their father said. “Life is full of tough choices, right? Pizza toppings shouldn’t be a tough choice. We’ll get a large half-and-half. Who should we order from?”
“Zeppe’s is the best,” Oliver said. “They hand stretch their dough.”
“No, Kay Jack is the best,” Emma said. “Their veggies are hand-cut.”
They wrangled and bandied words until their father piped up.
“Why don’t we try that new place on Middle Ridge Rd.? It’s right past the Perry Cemetery.”
“What new place?”
“It’s called Boggie’s Pizzeria. They deliver.”
“It’s not far,” Oliver said. “We could drive there and watch them make the pizza.”
“That’s a good idea, but their web site says they don’t do sit-down or take-out, only delivery.”
“That’s strange.”
“They must have their reasons.”
Emma called Boggie’s Pizzeria. Oliver listened closely, making sure she got his half of the order right. Their father looked out the window, contemplating the trials and tribulations of Solomon.
“They said five minutes.”
“Five minutes?” their father asked.
“That’s what they said.”
Just then the doorbell rang.
“That was fast,” their father said, reaching for his wallet and going to the front door. He opened it. There wasn’t anybody there. A large box of pizza looked up at him from the scraper mat outside the door. He felt air waft past him. it smelled terrible. He looked around for something that had maybe eaten too much cabbage. He picked up the box, closed the door, and went inside.
“Emmy, did they say anything about how we are supposed to pay for this pizza?”
“No, they just said five minutes and hung up.”
They got plates, gathered in the family room, and turned on the flat screen TV. It was movie night. They were going to watch “Scrapper.” The blurb about it said it was about a 12-year-old girl who lives by herself in a council flat somewhere in London after her mother dies. Her father has gone nobody knows where. She steals and sells bikes to get by. She tricks social services into believing she lives with her uncle. A grocery clerk in the neighborhood helps out by pretending to be her uncle on the telephone.
“How’s the pizza?” their father asked.
“It tastes like somebody sucked all the fun out of it,” Oliver said.
“It tastes like cardboard,” Emma said, even though she had never tasted cardboard.
Their father took a bite of the slice in his hand.
“It tastes worse than nothing,” he said. “How is that possible?” He looked at the box. Boggie’s Pizzeria was printed in jittery red letters with dripping edges. Below the name was the catchphrase “We are the Boggiemen. If you ain’t shakin’ we ain’t done our bakin’.”
“What’s with the shake and bake?”
The movie started. Georgie, the 12 year old girl, is doing the dishes, dusting, and vacuuming. She makes sure every throw pillow and memento is exactly where her mother left it. When she takes a break she watches old videos of her mother on a cell phone.
They were fifteen minutes into the movie when bedroom doors, bathroom doors, and closet doors started opening and closing. Footsteps thumped upstairs, more doors slammed, and the footsteps thumped back downstairs.
“I didn’t think it was up there, but where in God’s name is the basement in this house?” a voice in the kitchen demanded.
“What is going on?”
“I think there’s somebody in the kitchen, dad.”
The three of them peeked into the kitchen. There was somebody there, but whoever it was, was more shadow than flesh and blood. He was standing in a corner. He was wearing a dark shapeless robe. His arms were long and his hands were claws rather than hands. His eyes were blood orange and glowing. His teeth were sharp fangs. His feet were backward. They were freaky. His breath was terrible, even across the space of the room, which usually smelled better than any other room.
“That was you I smelled at the front door. You delivered our pizza, right?”
“Yes, how do you like it?”
“Not worth the money, if we had paid for it.”
“Oh, well, it got me in the door.”
“Who are you?”
“He’s the boogeyman, dad,” Oliver said.
“Why is the pizza called Boggie’s and not Boogeyman’s?”
“That was my partner, Slender Man. It was his idea. He doesn’t want to scare anybody away by calling our pizza parlor something menacing.”
“The worse than no flavor and you doing the deliveries is what is going to scare everybody away. What do you want, anyway?”
“He wants to find our basement,” Oliver said.
“But why? And besides, we don’t have a basement.”
“So he can hide there and come after us whenever he wants to. They like places with no windows. They will sometimes hide under beds. When they do they try to grab you by the feet when you are asleep and drag you away. I always keep my feet under the covers. Covered feet are boogeyman kryptonite.”
“Drag you away where?”
“Somewhere where they can eat you.”
“What?” their father exclaimed, reaching for a butcher knife.
“No, we don’t do that here. My country cousin the Sack Man does that. He carries them away in a sack. He’s the black sheep of the family. We’re more civilized on the North Coast n.”
“So, what is it you do, exactly?”
“I punish disobedient children.”
“Even if my children were disobedient, which they aren’t, I wouldn’t need your help, or anybody’s help, straightening them out.”
“Oh, you mean with your 21st century snowflake sermons. I put the fear of an angry Gd in them. When I straighten them out they stay straight. I’m as old as mankind, although what you call me comes from the Middle Ages, when Englishmen called me bogge. All children know what punishments their parents are capable of. No child knows what I am capable of. That is why I am terrifying and why I get the job done.”
“What about the anti-Monster Spray they sell at the Dollar Store?”
“I drink a glass of that every night.”
“It’s tonight right now, so maybe you should go home and have a glass,” Oliver said.
“This is my new home. No basement? No problem. I’ll live under one of your beds.”
“So that’s the way it is?”
“That’s the way it is.”
“Archangel Michael, we need your help down here,” Oliver whispered into the palm of his hand. He wasn’t Roman Catholic, but he knew his archangels.
There was a knock on the door.
“I’ll get it.”
It was Archangel Michael. He was carrying a spear in one hand with a sword hanging from his belt. He was wearing plate armor and a grim expression on his face.
“Where is he?”
“In the kitchen.”
Archangel Michael was the Mr. Big of archangels. He was the defender of the faith. He had led celestial armies against Lucifer when he rebelled. He vanquished the fallen angels and cast them out of Heaven. Lucifer became Satan when he got to the bottomless pit.
“Still working the graveyard shift, I see.”
“What are you doing here?”
The Archangel Michael showed him a Dollar Store bag full of nightlights. The boogeyman shrank back.
“Since you’re nothing but a glorified closet dweller, these should keep you in line.” Artificial light rendered boogeymen harmless.
“All right, all right, I’m going.”
“Not until you refund them the cost of the pizza.”
“They never even paid for it in the first place.”
“The refund is for their pain and suffering. You will get some pain and suffering if you don’t do what I say, and you know full well I mean what I say.”
“Show a little Christian charity.”
Archangel Michael snorted and brought his spear to bear.
“I give up.” The boogeyman pulled out a wad of cash.
“No funny money.”
He put the wad of cash away and pulled out a check book.
“I said no funny money.”
He pulled out a poke, which was a small leather pouch. It was full of gold nuggets. He shook some of them into his hand and rolled them out on the kitchen counter.
“Heaven rebukes you for what you are up to in this life,” the Archangel Michael said. “Now get the hell out of here.”
The boogeyman shape shifted into oily black smoke and was gone in an instant.
“Thanks for your help,” Oliver said to the Archangel Michael.
“It’s all in an eternity’s work.”
Ed Staskus posts monthly on 147 Stanley Street http://www.147stanleystreet.com, Made in Cleveland http://www.clevelandohiodaybook.com, Down East http://www.redroadpei.com, and Lithuanian Journal http://www.lithuanianjournal.com. To get the site’s monthly feature in your in-box click on “Follow.” His books are available on Amazon and Apple Books.
“Ebb Tide”
Summer, 1989. North Rustico, a small town on the north coast of Prince Edward Island. Criminal money on the move gone missing. A double cross and muscle from Montreal. One RCMP constable working the back roads stands in the way.
A Crying of Lot 49 Publication
