Surp-rice!

Story Sent in by David:

I arrived early at Natalie's house to pick her up for our first date. She lived with her parents and younger brothers. Her mother let me into the house, and I spoke with her as I waited for Natalie to come downstairs.

I hadn't been there five minutes when a horrific shriek came from upstairs. Natalie's mother ran halfway up the stairs and yelled, "Nat? What is it?"

Natalie's voice shouted down, "That piece of garbage! I hate him! Where is he?"

She stomped downstairs, shoving past her mother. Natalie was in a nice outfit, but her face was all business. Murderous business, from the looks of it. She looked at me, then without a word, stormed into what I guessed was the kitchen.

I heard her say, "There you are, you asshole!" There was a shout, the sound of crashing furniture, a door opening, running feet, and a door slamming shut. Then, silence. Natalie had apparently chased someone out of the house.

I exchanged looks with Natalie's mother, who had frozen on the stairs. She then went upstairs herself while I remained in the living room. A moment later, I heard her say, "Oh, Ben…"

She came downstairs, carrying a black pair of women's dress shoes. They were filled with gloppy white rice, and she showed them to me. She said, "That's Ben for you. Our youngest. Nat was probably planning to wear these tonight."

She carried them past me and opened her front door, presumably to empty them outside.

"Wait," I said, and she stopped. "May I?" I reached for the shoes.

She maintained a hold on them. "What did you have in mind?"

I replied, "Pouring the rice into Ben's bed."

I was expecting a fast no, so I followed it up with, "Nat looked really mad. I think this would cheer her up." Natalie's mother laughed and handed me the shoes. She said, "Second door on the left."

I took the stairs two at a time, followed Natalie's mother's directions, emptied as much of the rice under Ben's covers as possible, then ran back downstairs with the shoes and handed them back to Natalie's mother. She warned me with a smile, "I'm going to have to tell him that it was your idea. He'll want revenge."

I shrugged. "Let him try."

Natalie eventually returned without Ben. She apologized to me dozens of times, went upstairs to grab a different pair of shoes, and then we were finally ready to go out together.

On our way to dinner, I told her what I had done, and that I would take full blame for it, so that hopefully, Ben wouldn't retaliate against her. She laughed, said that she could never get away with something like that, and we had a great time despite our initial face-to-face encounter.

When we returned to her house, she kissed me goodbye on the cheek, promised that she'd tell me how things went once she made it back inside, and said that she wanted to see me again. I was excited, and it was certainly an unexpected sort of evening.

She wrote me a long email that I received the next morning. In it, she explained a bit about Ben's emotional problems, and that while he was usually harmless, she had returned that night to a trashed room. She retaliated by attempting to strangle him, and it had apparently taken both of her parents to separate them from each other.

One of the last lines of her email was, "It might be best if we waited a little bit for date #2."

I opted to postpone it indefinitely.