It was easy to find. It was a large red button on the other side of the truck with a clear plastic cover on it. It was the kind of button I imagined was used to launch nuclear weapons.
“You sure you want to do this?” Joe asked. “You can back out if you want.”
“Do you want to back out?”
“I mean, we’re going to fill their house with potentially toxic refuse. I can’t imagine that’s totally healthy or legal. But he is a jerk. It’s well-deserved potentially toxic refuse.”
“Don’t forget her,” I said. “Tight Tammy is a jerk, too.”
“Exactly. Who paints their toenails at the dinner table?”
“Just for that alone, she deserves to live in ten feet of excrement. Will it be ten feet? Will it really fill up the house?”
Joe looked up at the truck. It was huge. “I think it will be enough that they’ll want to move. They might have to burn the house down after.”
“That sounds mean when you put it like that. This is revenge, not something mean. Justice, not revenge. Well-deserved justice.”
“It’s not mean,” Joe agreed. “It’s just…a strong statement.”
“A statement that they’re jerks.”
“Yes.”
“Okay,” I said, taking a deep breath. “Let’s do it. Let’s exact justice and make strong statements.”
The hose was heavy, but I wanted to be the one to carry it and fill the house with poop. That left Joe to press the button. I wanted to do the actual damage, and I didn’t want Joe to get in trouble.
Initially, I had envisioned ringing the doorbell and when Steve opened the door, I would spray him. But that would mean he would see me, and in his present frame of mind, he would send me to Alcatraz for the rest of my life. So, instead, I found an unlocked window at the side of the house and opened it wide. It was the living room, and it was filled with heavy oak furniture that had been stolen from my house. I waved my arm, and Joe must have caught the signal because the truck started to rumble, and the hose started to shake, and sure enough, the town sewage began to pour out of the hose into Tight Tammy’s house.
There was a lot of pressure through the hose, and it shook with it. It was hard to hold on, but when an out-of-shape woman is faced with a daunting, physically exhausting task to avenge her own dignity and bank account, she can muster the strength of three Incredible Hulks. And I did. I was a Marvel superhero. I had the power to spray crap from an industrial hose into Tight Tammy’s house. I bet her toenail polish was going to smear now.
I laughed hysterically at the thought.
It took a long time for Steve and Tight Tammy to notice that anything was wrong, not until the living room was filled with three inches of sewage, and started to spill out into their hallway. That’s when I heard the screams and the sound of them running around, trying to figure out what was going on.
That’s also when I realized they would see me when they came into the living room. They wouldn’t see me at first, but when they saw the hose, they would try to wrestle with it, and that’s when they would see me. Yes, that’s exactly what would happen.
Uh-oh. There was a flaw in my plan.
Pulling the hose out of the window, I swung it over my shoulder and jogged to the front of the house, pouring sewage behind me. Joe saw me and pushed the button.
“Let’s get out of here,” I hissed.
Frank ran back from across the street before I finished the sentence. In a blur, he had the hose hooked up, jumped in the driver’s seat, and quickly drove away.
While he did that, Joe and I ran to his pickup truck and hightailed it down the street in the dark because Joe wisely didn’t turn on the headlights. In the side-view mirror, I saw Steve and Tight Tammy run outside to see how this horrible thing had happened to them. We had gotten away without them seeing, and as far as I knew, they had no idea I was behind the sewage.
Joe and I drove in silence for another couple of blocks when my phone rang.
“It’s him. The jerk,” I whispered in a panic.
Joe pulled over to the side of the road and turned off the engine. “Okay. Answer it now. Pretend you’re asleep at home. It’ll be fine.”
“Hello?” I answered groggily.
“Eliza, where are you?” Steve sounded furious. He sounded like someone had just filled his house with excrement.
“Hello? Steve? I’m sleeping.” I yawned for extra effect. “Can I call you back later?”
