As soon as there’s the slightest hint of pumpkin spice back in the air, people lose their fucking minds.
The thermometer dips below 90 degrees and suddenly everyone starts talking about cozy Fall bullshit non stop.
“Autumn is AMAZING!!!” “OMG sweater weather!!!” “Halloween is better than Christmas!!!”
FUCK YOU.
You see a lot if you live to be my age (I’m 15 now) and I feel like it’s my duty to pass on a little of this knowledge.
I’ve moved around my whole life, mostly from one shitty New England town to the next. All the city idiots come speeding up here in their Escaldes as soon as the first leaf turns, hell bent on getting the cutest pics to share on Instagram, no fucking clue how dangerous things as seemingly simple as a pile of colorful leaves can be.
So here ya go people. Listen up. This just might save your life.
THE DANGER OF LEAF PILES
If you watch local news, with their many segments meant to scare/inform you, then you already know some of the basics. When people rake their leaves in the fall, gathering all those beautiful piles of red and gold, they’re actually creating breeding grounds for pests and bacteria. You’ve got mold. You’ve got rats. You’ve got used condoms and broken needles and dog shit. Lovely stuff. But that ain’t the half of it. There’s way worse out there.
Little Suzy starts rolling around, it’s magical, it’s like a movie (a Hallmark movie). She laughs because she’s just a sweet innocent kid with her whole life ahead of her, not a care in the world and - BAM! Suzy’s fucking dead.
A kid that just doesn’t know any better.
You see it all too often. I know I have.
My neighbor and me a few years back, we’re living in this crumby town outside Lowell Mass, and there’s not a whole helluva lot to do, so he gets the bright idea to go on a walk.
“Yo Frankie (my name) I got an idea!” he says.
Most kids these days just sit inside and play video games, or watch other kids play video games (something I’ll never fucking understand), but me and - let’s call him “Billy” - we don’t. Mostly on account of being poor. I once had a dusty old Sega from Dad, but it broke about the same time he left. So anyways, we go play outside, like the good old days. You parents love to see it!
“Thank God they’re getting out of the house and getting fresh air.”
“Kids these days are just zombies. Always on their screens…”
Yeah well… I wish we had just stayed inside. It certainly would have been better for Billy.
This was back when I was still a kid, only 13 or so, and we got it in our heads to go do some stunts into leaf piles. We’ve seen plenty of Jackass, and even though they specifically tell you not to try and repeat anything you see on the show, well we got other ideas. So we run down to Dollar General to borrow (steal) a shopping cart.
The idea was we would push each other as fast as freakin possible down the hill and right into this huge mound of oak leaves over by the park. It was enormous, had to be six feet tall and ten foot wide. The township landscaping guys had heaped it all together, but still hadn’t gotten rid of it. It had sat the past two weeks (again, it was a crumby town) and had gotten bigger every day, just begging to be jumped in. With that size, it was essentially as good as any Hollywood crash mat, and we figured we could dive in with next to zero threat of injury.
We play Rock Paper Scissor to see who gets first up. Billy lucks out… or so he thinks.
He straps on his old bicycle helmet and hops in the cart.
“Wish me luck.” he says. Which of course is just about the worst thing anyone can say before doing something stupid.
I check my grip on the handle. Double check the laces on my shoes. Scan for cars. All clear.
Ready for take off.
We count down like a fucking rocket launch… then down we go.
I push as hard as I can for as long as I can. Between the sharp incline of River Street and my short lived stint as a running back for Pop Warner, we’re just about hitting warp speed. I hold on for as long as I can before tumbling to the wet asphalt, and leaving Billy to sail alone to his fate.
Billy hits that pile going Mach 10.
There’s an explosion of crunching leaves and dust and… he completely disappears.
He just instantly vanishes. Like the leaves have swallowed him whole.
I run to the bottom of the hill laughing and yelling out his name, no clue yet what’s happened.
By the time I reach the pile though, it’s clear something’s wrong.
There’s this horrible sucking and bubbling sound, like getting a shoe stuck in mud, only way louder, and then the whole heap starts to shake… like it’s ALIVE.
I go to reach into the leaves, thinking I’ll help Billy out of there, when my hands plunge into a cold thick slime. I jump back and fall to the ground, barely able to get free of whatever the hell’s in there.
“Billy! Billy you OK?!” I scream as I wipe the goo off on my jeans.
I don’t know what the fuck to do. I run and grab a stick, thinking I got to be careful. My hands are starting to burn and go numb.
I start poking the leaves with the stick, hoping I don’t take out one of Billy’s eyes. I can feel a blubbery mass hidden inside. It rolls around and makes these deep noises, like you hear whales make on Animal Planet. I start raking the leaves away with the branch, hoping Billy pops out and this BS will end. NOPE.
I uncover the worst thing I’ve ever seen (up till then).
Billy and the shopping cart are caught in this big freaking jelly monster thing. It’s like one of those gross Jello-Mold salads your grandparents eat, kind of see through with like ham and olives and shit, except with my friend as the fucking filling.
I just about flip my lid. I scream my ass off, hoping someone will hear or give a shit. Notta.
I plunge the stick into the gunk, hoping he’ll grab it and I’ll pull him out. Instead it snaps off and gets absorbed by this thing in two seconds.
Billy doesn’t look like he can breath. He can’t even move. He’s just hanging there, looking out with his terrified eyes, out this slimy greyish green blob. If I don’t move fast he’s going to die.
This is where you say “Call the police idiot!”
And this is where I say “I fucking wish!” We didn’t have cell phones! I still don’t! “Money don’t grow on trees” as Ma always reminds me.
Then the thing starts moving. Sliding along the ground like a big ass slug. It’s trying to get away. It’s heading right for the river at the edge of the park. If it dives in there, those icy waters, that’s it. I won’t be able to do jack.
It’s time to pull some MacGyver shit.
I check my pockets. Nothing but some spare change and a tiny pocket knife that I’m pretty certain won’t do a goddamn thing.
How do you fight fucking jello??
It’s not liquid, but it’s also not like a normal solid… it can just conform to whatever shape it needs and-
Jello Mold.
I CAN SHAPE THIS FUCKER.
The blob is slowly making its way toward the water, but it’s still gotta get through the park, and up ahead is the playground.
Dead center of that playground is one of those dome shaped jungle gym things. Do they have a name? You know, those things made of lots of interlocking metal rods like a honeycomb… or spaghetti strainer…
It’s a long shot, but it’s the only one I’ve got. Definitely the only one Billy’s got.
I run up ahead of the thing as it slimes its way forward, and I start taunting it. I’m trying to get it to follow me. You know like that guy in Jurassic Park does with the T-Rex? At first it just ignores me, determined to make it to the river and make its escape.
I take my jacket off and start smacking it. It jiggles and moans, but after a few hits, the goo latches onto the jean sleeve and pulls it inside next to Billy, who honestly looks like he might be dead at this point. His skin is changing color, peeling away in places. He’s being digested…
I have the blob’s attention now. Ma always said I stunk. “Go wash off that teenage funk” she’d say.
It payed off that day though. It must have liked the way I smell, because it starts coming after me. Picking up speed, hungry for more.
I dash ahead and dive through one of the holes of the playground dome. I barely fit which is good… Billy wasn’t exactly small, but that shopping cart definitely won’t fit inside, and he’s still in it.
So I’m standing in the center of the dome, and I realize that I’m basically in a cage now. If this goes according to plan, it should save Billy, but I’ll have to jump out real fucking fast or I’ll just end up swapping places with him.
I’m hooting and hollering and smacking my ass. “Come on bitch! Don’t stop now! Come and get it!”
The jello blob smashes through the steel frame of the dome like Playdough. It groans and slops through the holes, its globules splattering back together on the other side, while Billy and the shopping cart and a bunch of other shit are strained out of its goo before falling to the ground outside. I jump up and grab one of the bars and pull myself out and onto the top of the dome, my shoes covered in gunk as it reached for me. A real close call.
There’s this frustrated wet cry from below, but the thing just presses through the other side of the dome and keeps heading for the river, defeated and ready to find a new hiding place for prey.
I jump down and run to Billy. He ain’t breathing.
I scoop out as much of the snotty gloop as I can from his mouth and turn him over and whack him a bunch of times to try and clear his airway. I’m freaking out.
I try and remember Coach Conover’s first aid lessons. I definitely wasn’t paying enough attention, but some of it stuck. After a minute of chest compressions and some super gross slime covered mouth breaths, Billy vomits his guts out and starts breathing again on his own.
I’ve never been so relieved in all my life. I start laughing like some crazy crackhead, so fucking happy he’s alive. But then he starts screaming.
He won’t stop.
His whole body was covered in third degree chemical burns. I look down at my own hands. The adrenaline of the last few minutes kept me from really feeling what the slime was doing.
My fingers looked like hot dogs left on the grill too long. I start screaming too.
What the fuck had just happened?!
I watch as the leaf pile slides into the river and disappears from view…
No one will ever believe us.
When a woman walking her dog finally found us, two kids wailing and looking like biohazard zombies, she quickly used her cell to call the police.
We got rushed to the hospital, and while I was OK after a day or two in the burn unit, Billy was in there for months.
We got interrogated over and over. Our story made no sense, but neither did our injuries. No one fucking listened.
Instead they decided it was all my fault.
I was a “bad influence” on Billy. I was the jackass that made him do something stupid that almost got him killed. It was actually his idea I told them, but fuck me right?
Didn’t see much of Billy after that. His parents won’t let me see him.
I feel bad for them kind of. I do. They were scared for their kid, but also fuck them. We were just having some fun. We couldn’t have known what would happen.
My science teacher once told us how people in Medieval times thought all the rats that were reeking havoc on them had spontaneously generated from garbage and sewage. Like that the piles of shit in the street created them. He said that this was before science proved that doesn’t happen.
I thought about that a good long while. I can’t say if every time you rake a pile of leaves together you run the risk of one of these monsters appearing. Could it have been spontaneous like they thought about the rats back in the day? As crazy as it sounds? Or did it come from somewhere else and just hide there? Was this just a one in a million or even billion chance??
I can’t say anything for sure, other than this actually happened. Me and Billy have the scars to prove it. We always will.
I wish I could say this was the first and last example of my childhood trauma, but it’s not even close. I’ve had my share of mandatory therapy, and I’ve horrified and confused enough teachers and guidance counselors to know that most adults don’t get me or the things I’ve been through. They say they’re listening, but mostly they just think I’m full of shit.
I’ve got some pretty unbelievable stories. I’ll give them that.
So instead of wasting my time telling them the truth of what I’ve gone through, I’ll just keep posting here and hope maybe some good can come of them. If it can save one person, then maybe it will all have been worth it.
I sure hope.