Bad Influences

“Bad Influences” -- A Peggy Scribble
By Michael Kroetch

The streetlight was broken, but we still hid our bicycles in the alley next to the movie theater. We had to stash them between the alley's wall and a big green dumpster because Dad passed this way on his way home from work and he didn’t like us going to see movies—especially foreign ones. They were bad influences.
The woman who took our tickets was bent over like a hunchback. There was mustard on the rim of her lip and Peggy whispered that her perfume smelled like dish soap. The woman said the movie started ten minutes ago. We went in anyway, trying to be quiet as we tiptoed across the squeaky linoleum floor with our jumbo-sized popcorns in our hands.
There was nowhere to sit except the front row. Peggy couldn’t believe how uncomfortable these seats in the front row were. She said she thought they were so stiff because they had probably been made out of the old blackboards from her school. Then she giggled a little, but stopped when there was a creepy noise behind us. Neither of us moved. We just listened to that sound. It was muffled rumbling sound, a little like the ocean but not as nice. Finally I peered around a little. It was an old man back there right behind us. And he kept wheezing. Peggy said I should tell him to stop. I wouldn’t. He wore a raincoat. Peggy said she didn’t like him or his raincoat. He made her feel funny. And, worse, he kept breathing on her. She said we should leave. We did.
But we didn’t go home. We climbed up some soda crates behind the movie house and waited on its roof until the old man came out, whereupon I reached my hand out far as I could and dropped a slug on him. It landed on his hat, but he didn’t notice so it wasn’t any fun. Then, as we rode home, it started to rain. After it kept raining for a week Peggy said maybe we shouldn’t have thrown the slug at him.