The Prank

“I saw this on TikTok and it totally works.”

Marcus shook his head. “It doesn’t. It’s a legend. They faked it.”

“No for real, come on,” I insisted, and we snuck up the basement stairs as carefully as possible. It was one a.m., so I was pretty sure my parents had gone to bed, though my mom had a terrible habit of staying up forever and reading on the living room couch. I opened the basement door slowly and silently then peered around the corner; coast was clear.

We tiptoed into the spare bathroom by the garage because it was farthest from my parents’ upstairs bedroom in the whole house. The kitchen sink would have been way too noisy. I turned on the bathroom sink slowly: first the cold water to a small but steady stream, then the hot water to a place that I thought matched. It made a splashing noise but not a loud hissing gush, so it seemed safe. I felt the temperature with my fingers until I was satisfied it was warm enough, then Marcus put the Tupperware tray from our snack under the stream.

The noise of the water hitting the empty tray full of cheese-dust crumbs was so loud, but it quickly hushed as the water level rose. “Okay, that’s good,” I whispered, turning off the taps when the tray was mostly full. I took it from Marcus, giving myself the burden of carrying it without sloshing as we made our stealthy way back downstairs.

Eric was fast asleep on the beanbag chair, sprawled out with his mouth open and his glasses still on. He had short-cropped red hair and his right arm was dangling helplessly to the floor. His freckled hand was my target.

I pushed the tray of lukewarm water under his hand, which slid up the lid then flopped into the water. Only his curled fingers were submerged, which made me doubt for the first time if this would work. In the TikTok, the subject’s whole hand was immersed. Would a few fingers be enough?

“Now what?” Marcus whispered, still in ninja mode from our excursion upstairs.

“We wait,” I whispered back.

“I don’t want to stare at his junk all night.”

“We don’t have to,” I said, though I realized that I was, indeed, staring at Eric’s junk. “We’ll smell it. It’s pee. He’s totally going to pee himself.”

“When?”

I shrugged. “At some point.”

We resumed playing video games with the sound off, but our whispering gradually grew into low talking, then regular talking, then occasional bursts of shouting until one of us would shush the other, mostly to keep Eric from waking up but also because we didn’t want to rouse a parental check-in. We were, after all, going for an all-time record of staying up until noon, a challenge Eric failed with almost 12 whole hours to go.

Video games did what video games always do, locking us into a time warp where only our bladders could snap us away from the entrancing pull of relentless repetitive action. It was almost four a.m. before we paused the game and looked around blearily. Marcus went to the bathroom — less quietly than before because this was an obviously sanctioned trip — while I fought the urge to just lay down for a little while. I didn’t have to go. Not yet. Tonight was all about holding off as long as possible. That’s how you got to noon.

“Whoa, look at this,” Marcus said when he came back downstairs. He was looking at Eric.

“Did he pee?”

“No, I told you he wouldn’t, but look.” And he pointed at the hand in the tray.

There were white feathery things floating around the fingers in the water. The level was a little lower, but still enough to keep his knuckles and finger pads submerged, and I could see through the clear plastic sides a gross something attached to each digit.

“It looks like my sister’s fish did before it died,” Marcus said.

“Cool,” I said. “I mean, it’s probably just the snack crumbs or, like, his dead finger skin or something. Look how pruney his fingers are.”

“Let’s take his hand out.”

“No way, it still might work.”

“Look at him, man.” And Marcus now pointed at Eric’s face.

“What?”

“Doesn’t he look pale to you?”

The only change really was that he had closed his mouth. Yeah, his lips looked a little dry, but pale? I mean, the kid was already super pale. “He’s fine. We just need to get more of his hand in the water.”

I found a book in my backpack and slid it under the tray to hold it up more, which did put Eric’s entire hand and wrist into the water now. “It’s not warm enough, though,” I said, dipping my own fingers into the now-cool water. “We gotta refresh it.”

“Dude!”

Marcus was pointing yet again, but this time at my own fingers. The feathery things were somehow swimming from Eric’s fingers toward mine. I pulled my hand out of the water, flinging droplets everywhere, and laughed. “Whoa.”

“What was that?”

“I don’t know.” The feathers had reversed back without turning around, reattaching to Eric. “Are they, like, sea monkeys? Were there sea monkey eggs in our Cheetos?” This was all striking me as hilarious, but while I giggled, Marcus remained deadly serious.

“Seriously, get his hand out of there.”

“Come on, no. Come on. Please. Let’s just see what happens in one more hour, okay?”

Marcus fixed me with his brown eyes. “You sure?”

“Yeah, one more hour, and if it gets weirder, we’ll take his hand out.”

Groundwork for the truce laid, we went back to our video game, but neither of us felt like unpausing it yet.

“I still think I should refresh the water somehow to make it warm again,” I said after a little while. My ears were kind of ringing, which I recognized from previous sleepover challenges as a sign of super tiredness.

“Just leave it, okay?” Marcus was curled up in one of the recliners facing the TV. He cheeks looked heavy. I could tell I was about to lose him.

“You going to sleep? Now?”

“Naw, I just don’t feel like playing anymore. I’ll stay awake.”

“You have to. I’m not doing this by myself.”

“Just play and I’ll watch.”

So I kicked his character out of the game and took over the campaign solo. Within ten minutes, Marcus was fast asleep.

A six a.m., dawn started to brighten up the basement window wells, and I knew my parents would start tromping about soon. I was sad about Marcus but used to this. I always lasted the longest. I saved our game and shut the TV off, then went to go check on Eric in the beanbag chair by the stairs.

He wasn’t there.

My first thought was that he’d rolled over in his sleep and slumped onto the floor next to the beanbag, all curled up like a baby. But that wasn’t the case. He wasn’t anywhere at all. And neither was the tray of water.

I opened the hot water closet to see if he’d snuck in there somehow with the intent to scare me, but, after an electric moment when I’d whipped the door open as quickly and surprisingly as possible to scare him back, I found the closet to be full of just its usual stuff. There was no way Eric would fit in there anyway.

So now the obvious answer was that he’d got up to go to the bathroom, found the tray, thought it was … I don’t know, something, maybe he even figured out our prank … and took it upstairs to put in the kitchen sink on his way to a morning bathroom break. Eric was the kid who did things like that, adult chore things before any adults asked.

I thought about going upstairs to find him, but if he really was going to the bathroom, like, maybe even pooping, then I didn’t want to … just seemed like a not cool thing to do, knock on the bathroom door and stuff. Besides, he was just going to come back down when he was done. Instead, I went to the other recliner and waited. And, I guess, fell asleep.

“Dude,” was the next thing I heard. It was Marcus, shaking me awake. “Dude, it’s after noon. Get up.”

“What?”

“I gotta go home. It’s almost two.”

I was confused. I rubbed my eyes. Why hadn’t my parents woken us up? If not for breakfast, for lunch at least? I craned my head up over the recliner back to look at the beanbag chair for Eric.

“Where’s Eric?”

Marcus shrugged. “Probably home. Or on his way. I guess he woke up first and your parents took him.” Eric lived farther away and needed a ride. Marcus only had to go across the street.

Both of them? “My parents aren’t upstairs?”

“No, and neither is your sister.”

Right. “Oh, ‘kay, I bet dad took her to soccer and mom took Eric home.”

“Whatever. I’m going home okay?” Marcus looked like trash. Even though we’d both got the right number of hours of sleep, he was still clearly wiped from being up so late.

“Yeah, see you later.”

“Right.” And he trudged upstairs.

And I guess I went back to sleep again.

When I woke up on my own, it was starting to get dark outside. I went upstairs and found the house empty. Where was everyone? The dry erase on the fridge had no notes on it. I flopped in the couch in the living room and flipped on the TV.

By dinnertime, I started to get scared. I called Marcus. “Hey.”

“Hey, can’t talk long, we’re just about to start dinner.”

“Nobody’s here,” I said, trying not to sound as scared as I felt.

“Your parents aren’t home?”

“Nobody.”

“Why are you calling me, then? Call them!”

“I did. No answer.”

“Did you text?”

“Yeah, nothing.”

There was a pause on the other end. “You want me to tell my mom?” Marcus asked.

“Not yet. Just. I’ll call later if they’re still not here, ‘kay?”

“Yeah, sure,” he said, and we hung up.

I turned the TV off and went upstairs to my bedroom. I was still wearing my clothes from yesterday, and I thought maybe taking a shower and putting on something fresh would make me feel better.

In my room, I saw Eric.

He was enormous and stretched and round, the size of a horse. His glasses were gone, and his eyes were bulged out and red at the edges. His mouth was as wide open as it could get. He was lying on his impossibly huge and round stomach in the middle of my room, nearly taking up the whole space. I could smell his breath, which was like fireplace ash and sour milk.

He started to breathe in. I could feel it pulling me. I could feel him pulling me toward his huge wide open mouth.

I tried to slam the door but the suction was too much. It was like wind in my room. There was a noise now, a growling, and Eric’s mouth was getting even bigger and bigger, like it was ripping his face in half. There was nothing inside it — no tongue, no throat. It was just a blackness that was inhaling like a vacuum cleaner. A poster on my wall tore off and immediately flew into his gaping maw. I was now holding on to the doorknob of my room door with all my might.

“Eric, what the…” I yelled.

The void only answered with a steadily growing growl. The wind increased. My legs started to be pulled free from the ground. I could hear the door hinges straining.

“Eric! Stop!”

But he didn’t stop. It didn’t stop. The void swallowed me. The void swallowed me whole.