Behind the House the Ground Has Opened Up

Story Sent in by Verna:

I fielded dating site emails from all sorts of losers until Gerald sent me a message. He was astonishingly polite and was able to write cohesive sentences. Maybe it was just that he was the one-eyed man in the land of the blind, but I didn't see any red flags in the beginning and so we kept up a correspondence.

After a bit he asked me out to lunch and gave me an address. I asked him if it was a restaurant and he said it was that of an amazing deli.

When I pulled up to the address he had given me, I found it was a house. I called him to ask if I had the right place and he said I did. "Come on out back," he encouraged me.

When I found him in the backyard, he was digging a hole. And when I say it was a hole, I mean it was deeper than he was tall, and he was close to six feet. He was in torn jeans, no shirt, and was sweatier than any sweaty man I had ever before beheld.

He pointed to another shovel nearby. "Grab it," he said, "Help me out."

"No," I replied, "We doing lunch?"

He laughed. "When we're done digging."

"Why are you digging?"

"We're playing a trick on my friend. Come on. Grab the shovel."

I asked him, "This isn't your house?"

"No. Grab the shovel. It'll be faster with two. Then I'll take you to the deli."

I was in date attire, but I figured that the sooner we were done there, the sooner we'd do lunch. I didn't put forth much digging effort at all, and he was evidently displeased with the quality of my work and ultimately asked me to be lookout.

"Why are we digging a hole?" I asked him.

He didn't answer but climbed out and said, "I'll finish myself later. Let's have lunch."

He toweled himself down and threw on a shirt. We walked to a nearby deli and he bought us sandwiches. When we sat down I asked him what the deal was with the hole.

He said, "I'm playing a trick on my friend. It's his house. I'm going to put a blanket over it and spikes on the bottom." He nearly choked with laughter on his Sprite after he said that. It was around this time that I thought I'd be better off as far away from Gerald as possible.

Once I was done with the sandwich, he asked me if I was ready to go back and help him some more. But I turned him down and went home. He must have sensed my disillusionment because he never called me again, which was a good thing. As for his "friend," I have no idea if he wound up in the backyard pit or not.