Meat for Sale

For long time listeners of scary story podcasts, this story will be familiar to you. It's still one of my favorites. This is the original scary story without being shortened down like the previous version, the one that was edited to fit in the episode. I really hope you like it. My name is Edwin, and here it's a scary story. Kids were out in the front yard again, treating it as their own little park or something, and it really made me angry. It would be years until those little brats would begin to get a glimpse of what taking care of the most beautiful lawn on my street was like. I try to scare them off with the water hose one time. But one of those parents, you know, the kind have the audacity to come to my front door and complain about it. What the water hurt the kid? It was water, but what else can we expect from a child with a parent like that woman. I told her to go away and close the door before she took out her cell phone to record me. My grandchildren always told me to watch out for those people recording me. They said it would go viral or something. But this is when people get angry at you for offending them. At least that's what I understood. They also warned me about the phone calls from people pretending to be someone I know, or those that ask for my credit card number to verify a purchase. But I catch on right away. I don't trust credit cards either, and ah, very clearly, I remember this one poor salesman, the one selling time shares. Carmen once tried to get me to buy one of those things, and boy do I remember the fight we got into. It was at a restaurant. It was all paid for with extra salted steak and lots of wine. The men even had the documents right there, a stack of them by the wide screen. To make their presentation. They promised access to one of the most exclusive beaches in Florida, one that would be available to me for two weeks out of the year, and that I could choose the dates I wanted to go, that it would be such a good investment, and that I could sell it for much much more. But I hardly fall for this stuff. I would describe myself as straightforward, blunt, honest. But Carmen said that I was being rude for asking them about how their offer was not a ripoff, and she would have stormed out of there had they not made a stay for free Disneyland tickets. Carmeron wasn't around anymore, though, so I started doing my own thing around the house. I finally got rid of the popcorn ceiling, the baths of stopped clogging with all of Carmen's hair. But anyway, most issues were solved when she left, except for this one. The lawn would not stay green if those little monsters kept coming around. They tried everything from simple keep out signs to the signs with the beware of dog wording. Yet those little humans kept rolling down the tiny hill of my front yard and fell right into the garden area. I got a good look at one of them once. He was wearing baseball cleats, those spikes at the bottom of his shoes, ripping out the fragile roots of the flowers about to bloom in that dark and perfect dirt. I stretched out my hand and pointed my index finger at him, and then I lifted my thumb the shape of a gun. He should have seen the look on his face. I came out of the porch signently, But now that I think about it, that small sharp shovel in my hand. Probably wouldn't help my case with the brat's parents, but it got the job done. She just took off running. There were four that kept returning, water Kid, Ponytail, Belly, and his younger sister, Booger Girl. The two siblings knew Ponytail already, I could tell, but I think they met water Kid right here on my lawn when I sprayed water Kid with the hose. All four of them stopped showing up for a few days, then later came back. I may have crossed the line, but the boy was hilarious. The woman who came to complain turned that kid into a monster. I swear he would come by and beg to be seen. As he stood in the middle of the yard, I could see him looking toward the window to see if I would come out. He would cough and make noises, taunting me. He had about ten more years of mom protection going for him. We all know how those kids end up. Him and his friends went through the yard after school almost every single day, their shoes bending and twisting every blade of grass as they ran through the lawn. I just stared at them from the safe, dark living room. But I had a plan there was supposed to be a joke that would only scare a child, and I think I had seen it in a movie, and so I just went to the hardware store and picked up a piece of wood, also some red spray paint. We won't get into the details, but know that paint was never supposed to cost as much. The cost of wood was nothing short of theft. But anyway, store offered to cut the wood for me, but no, there was no need. I took care of my own things. They would probably mess them up anyway. I got home and did the rest. I had to saw off part of the wood into a neat square. Then I saw it through one of the sides. Again it was perfect, but that was a problem, so I fixed it a sign like this would be better if it looked distillately, little bit crooked. I picked up my stencils, the same ones that I marked the house numbers with, and I couldn't help smiling to myself and imagining the look on the kid's eyes when they made their way back to the lawn and stood in front of the sign. I kept smiling that whole time until the paint dried. I wanted to be there when they would mouth the words to themselves, children meet for sale. I waited until nighttime to put it up. I knew those kids walked either on their way to school or to the park on the other block, and it would only be a matter of time. Then it worked. Water kids saw it first. Can you believe that he walked up to it, read it out loud, and took off, running right across the street, probably to go tell his mother. Then Ponytail and the other two came by with her backpacks. When something Belly pointed at the sign. Bog Or girl didn't know what the sign said and walked up to it, but the other two came back and pulled her away. Mission accomplished. Thing got the message stay away from my lawn. But everything everything comes at a price. Part two of Meat for Sale is coming upward after this. Stay with me. This episode is brought to you by Betterhelp. It was something so simple, giving myself the time to sit down and write in a new place, when I realized how distracted I had become with day to day life. Something I had never thought about. And that's the thing. We're always figuring things out because we're constantly changing as we grow. Who works for you today might not work tomorrow, and I'm glad that Better Help is there to help you with that journey of self discovery from wherever you are. Therapy lets you do that and more as you answer the right questions like multiple light bulbs turning on over your head. And if you're thinking of starting therapy, give Better Help a try. It's online, convenient and flexible. Just fill out a brief questionnaire and you'll get matched with the licensed therapist. Remember that you can switch therapists at any time for no additional charge. Discover your potential with Better Help. Visit Betterhelp dot com slash scary story today to get ten percent off your first month. That's Better Help h e lp dot com slash scary story. I laughed so hard that tears started rolling down my left eye as it went out to the porch and pull the sign down, then placed it inside by the front door. It reminded me of the time I scared off the squirrels from stealing from the bird feeder by using a bicycle wheel by the time I scared off a guy who peeked into my car when I was taking a nap outside of a Denny's diner. My daughter had gotten me a GPS thing that I didn't know how to turn off, and of course someone was going to try to steal it. But as his face looked into the window, I jumped up and said hello. He bumped into the car behind him and then took off running. It was my thing, you know, justice, I guess you could call it. People should get what they deserve. I even started defrosting the cheesecake to eat it later that night. Good moods don't come around often at this age. Let me tell you, the news had just started. So it was around six pm, a beautiful slice of cheesecake on a paper plate on my lap, when I heard a light knock on the door, then chatter from outside. I walked over to the kitchen window and looked the fake red curly hair woman and her flowery dress, scrunched up face and water kid about two steps behind her. Yes, there was his mother again. I cracked the door open and asked how I could help her, and she said that she wanted to talk to me, moving away from a cellphone she was holding up toward me. They said, I didn't want to talk, especially with her cellphone right in my face, so I tried to shut the door, but she put her foot in there. Not a problem. I gave it a kick and she howled and yelled. I think this is what made it worse. Her voice only grew angrier as she spoke even more and more, and I kept trying to shut the door. She yelled out, calling me god knows what, and said that I was kidnapping children and turning them into meat. I couldn't believe my ears. I still chuckled a bit. But this was the thing my grandchildren had warned me about, even my daughter had brought it up. Phones can make it go famous on the internet. She said, I could get fired, harassed, or even shot, but I had no job anymore, retired, thank you very much. And if anyone did the harassing around here, I knew it was not the other people. I could admit that. I mean, not to a court of law, but to you, of course. And getting shot, well, I guess that changed things. I hadn't gotten a new gun ever since Carmen threatened, supposedly as a joke, to shoot me in my sleep. That thing went on sale so fast at the pawn shop. My dinner hadn't even cooled down when I got back from it. But that internet thing that happened to my friend Dave. You see, he always got carried away with things a bit much, even for me. He was doing some fixing to his backyard and asked for gravel that he knew he had to order ahead of time. Had something to do with the computer's messing up, I think, and so he called but was told he needed to place to order on the internet. That old guy is worse than I am at those things. How was he supposed to figure it out? So he went to the store and they asked him to download some program for his phone, and I understood why Dave lost it. He just asked to talk with the manager to have them order it for him, but he said that he couldn't help him. I don't know if that's exactly how it went, but that's what he told me. For thirty years, Dave had been going to that same warehouse sometimes twice a day, so of course I imagine he let them have it, and someone happened to record on their phone what happened, and I think that's when it started. They somehow figured out where he lived and he started getting phone calls, people calling him entitled and that he should be ashamed of himself. He did have a short temper. I never got to see what happened after that, put I didn't give it too much attention, But I think that's what made me think here, because here I was with an angry woman with the phone on my property, and I needed to think fast before the same thing happened to me. She walked along the porch and to the other front window and tried recording inside my house, all while speaking to somebody I don't know who, while recording, announcing to them that she was going to foul a complaint in everything. The woman went all out. Water kid was going to have some trouble once he grew up, and he always depended on his mom to fix things for him. And then it happened. Over the next several days, I started getting people knocking on my door, reporters. They said they wanted to talk about the incident with the kids, and what I was doing, what I did for a living, and how I explained myself. Now, these guys are intense with their questioning, and they don't take answers very well. They simplifire a question after a question, and I refused to answer anything. I know my rights. I didn't know how big it had gotten until I got a call from Carmen. She had apparently read my story or seen it somewhere I don't know, but said that I should stay quiet for a bit, not to talk to anyone. If she was giving me advice for my safety, I was probably in trouble. Then I got a call from one of my daughters, who lived a couple of states over by now. She told me she had heard about me on the news and if everything was all right. I explained to her the thing about the sign, the joke I made. She laughed but said to simply keep it to myself for a little while and that people would forget. She knew my sense of humor, and she was right. People did forget. But it really made me think about how people take things too seriously nowadays. When I was growing up, things were simpler. A bully went away with pure muscle. Jokes were jokes. There was no point to it, though. I always felt like I needed to keep my opinion to myself, except with the old friends. I guess the ones that were still around. Is God forsake in town anyway, and thank goodness, nobody recorded those conversations. A couple more days after that, the phone calls from the reporter stopped, when over the next week the neighbors stopped lurking around the front yard and taking photos. I could finally take out the trash without feeling the eyes from the houses across the street staring at me through the window. But it was one of those things that I'll never forget. I mean, the sign was funny well to me, and I still kept it in my garage. It made me laugh whenever I passed by it and remembered the whole ordeal the reporters and water kids mom only even made me laugh even more. I mean, you've ever seen white eyes with eyelashes that reach a hairline, yelling and spitting and anger in front of a little chicken kid. Speaking of that, the kids stopped showing up in the front yard, so my mission was indeed complete, and that was the whole purpose of this thing. But still there's something, only one thing that really bothered me out of this whole situation, and I thought about it at night sometimes, and how they got my number. It happened a while after the whole thing had finally settled down. It was strange. One afternoon, I was sitting on the couch flicking through the channels on the television when my phone rang. I set the diet Pepsi down on the table in front of me, and I managed to get off the couch and then walked over to the kitchen to pick up the phone. Before I could say hello, I heard a voice on the other end say I'm calling about the sign. Not this again, I remember thinking to myself another reporter. I thought this was over. People forget That's what I was told. But this guy had a strange tone to his voice. I could tell from the first second I heard him a wrong number. I started saying, about to put the phone back on the hook. Wait, I heard the man say, sounding desperate, I put the phone closer to my ear. How much is it? And I guess that's what happens when you take a joke too seriously. Let me know what you thought of this story. My info is in the description of this episode. You know it's interesting. One of the most popular episodes on my other podcast on Scary Mystery Surprise are Thanksgiving special episode called a Taste for Human Meat. It's also very popular just a heads up though, if you want to listen to that one. It gets pretty dark very quickly, and it's just a very disgusting story. Just the heads up. Listen at your own risk, and if you do want to look it up, it's over on Scary Mystery Surprise for ad free episodes. Make sure to check out Scary Plus over at scaryplus dot com, or you can also try out our Apple podcast channel check at the same content on either one. That group of fans of the show that are also members of Scary Plus are helping me fund a brand new podcast about scary places and of course for all the stuff that comes along with managing all these shows. Anyway, thank you very much for listening. See yu soon.