by Jude H. (10th Grade)

On October the thirty-first, Old Man Rutbur was walking home, to his house, when, upon his very own front door, he spotted something that had  not previously been there. A medium-ish sized letter “B”. It was capitalized. 

He stared at it for a moment and then shrugged it off, thinking the neighborhood hooligans were up to their old tricks again. Old Man Rutbur put some oats in Old Horse Toby’s stable and headed back to the house, staring quizzically at the “B” for a few minutes, as if it was a cipher that he had to solve, but soon gave up. 

Then, Old Man Rutbur thought of something. His wife, Affectionate Old Lady Stusan, had often called him “Burs” (affectionately of course). It must be her ghost coming to affectionately haunt his house! Old Man Rutbur smiled to himself a smile that showed all the teeth he had left.

Old Man Rutbur’s teeth were like the stars: yellow and far apart. “Thanksh Shtewzhy!” Old Man Rutbur couldn’t say his ‘S’s properly. 

Then, he saw the “B” again. It was affixed to his easy chair and decidedly larger than the one enraptured to his front door. Old Man Rutbur glanced around uneasily. “Shtewzhy?” he questioned to the obnoxiously unresponsive house. 

Old Man Rutbur made a noise like a whale with severe back problems and hauled his creaky old self into the kitchen to slurp up leftover salad that he had left in the “freezer”. 

But when he arrived, there it was again. 

The “B” was now in a size fourteen Frijole font.

Old Man Rutbur didn’t care for the change, retrieved his salad from the depths of the “freezer” and left it to thaw.

A few minutes later, the salad, having deteriorated quickly in the oppressive heat from the evil thermostat, was slurped down in three seconds and settled like a pile of wet winter sludge made of ranch dressing in Old Man Rutbur’s stomach.

Having eaten, Old Man Rutbur went to go sleep in his bed, which had a mattress that felt like a slab of concrete infested with bed bugs and had a nail down by the feet. 

The “B” had returned, once again its regular size and font. Old Man Rutbur gave it a wave and got on his pajamas, curled up like a hedgehog, and hibernated until November.

The “B” was terribly disappointed. 

The plan had been to make Old Man Rutbur terrified of his house. Then the “B” looked back on Old Man Rutbur’s daily life and realized where its plan had gone wrong. Old Man Rutbur clearly had dealt with a lot of creepy things in his life and also he had eaten that salad that was ninety-five percent ranch dressing. 

The “B” left in disgust.