#happy november 16th heres a piece about manberg beginnings in block party | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

teethkid67 · 6 months

Text

you begin your sunday on the couch, dress shoes still on, with a headache and a handful of stale gummy worms from the party last night. schlatt begins his with a cigar, and quackity starts with his arm as an ashtray. fundy is outside picking shotgun shells and fireball bottles out of the grass before you've even had time to say good morning.

it is not a good morning. dark like chew tobacco and slow as tar you realize no-one is coming to save you anymore. quackity won't look you in the eye, but he bites his cheek to keep his grin down as his gaze roams the walls like he can't wait to tear the place apart.

schlatt is the first to take something off the wall: an old, ugly painting wilbur picked up at a homegoods a million years ago. something he surely never gave much of a shit about, but you still flinch when schlatt lifts it from the nail and instructs you to get a garbage bag. but you fetch one and hold it open for him and then, when you put up no fight, and fundy is still outside, and quackity is still all shark smile, he tells you to start cleaning.

that is what it takes for them to begin picking your house to the bones. its methodically at first, dumping old takeaway boxes and draining vodka bottles, then harsh and uncaring like a flood or a struggle, toppling lamps and breaking mirrors. you dutifully pick up solo cups and half-empty pretzel bags and just as dutifully ignore anything that's not evidence of a party. eventually this catches up with you when schlatt tells you to kick it into fuckin' gear, kid, and jerks his chin at the fucking telephone of all things, this place isn't gonna clean itself.

a few minutes later quackity hands you an armful of everything that used to be pinned to your white fridge, looking a little sheepish but frankly not all that guilty. an old worksheet of fundy's is whats at the top of the stack, sunbleached from the window above the sink and with a broken chunk of now-gummy magnet stuck to the page.

WRITE about a time you had to make a difficult decision, it reads in big letters. explain what the decision was and what choice you made. At the top is a big, circled 100.

report cards and sticky notes and novelty magnets are joined by your vomit in the big bin at the curb. with your hands on your knees you take inventory. theres a box of shampoo and soap bars taken from the bathroom, and a bag of bedsheets and pillowcases. theres schlatt's car in your driveway and it makes your heart jackrabbit. wilbur doesn't drive. even if he did, his car wouldn't be out front.

you go back inside and take on the rest of the house with a newfound sense of numbness—emptying your stomach had probably helped. fundy has appeared again, and you help him bag up the books that schlatt had swiped off the mantle to make room for his shotgun. no matter what you do, he won't say a word to you.

eventually you are both led by an eager quackity to the backyard shed, where he hands you a hatchet and fundy a hacksaw and tells you to take down the fence.

schlatt says no more fence, he says, why would we need a fucking fence? so we gotta take the stupid thing down.

you swallow your pride with globs of spit and swing for the support beams so fundy, who quickly abandoned the hacksaw, can tear out the boards with his bare hands. he's mad, if the look on his face and the way he pries at the panels are any indication. at who is anyones guess. you're starting to think it might not be schlatt. quackity arms himself with a chainsaw and has a great, violent time laughing and breaking the wood into manageable sizes for your fireplace.

schlatt comes to lean against the railing on your raised porch and watches the three of you work, smoking what you think is his third cigar of the day. in his other hand is tommy's favorite glass, about a third full with whiskey and ice.

he and quackity shout over the roar of the chainsaw about next steps; living room paint color, new sheets for the bed, what to make for dinner. your arms shake and the afternoon sky darkens with clouds. when the temperature drops and the sky begins to spit down rain, schlatt and quackity duck inside with a shout to finish up out there.

by the time the fence is gone, the sun has set behind the woods, you're soaked to your skin, and your fingers are blue with cold and red with blood blisters. you collapse on the couch–the same one you've slept on for almost as long as you can remember–and shut your eyes against a living room you no longer recognize. fundy disappears into his bedroom and comes back in a set of dry clothes. quackity frowns and tells you to get up, you'll ruin the upholstery, then offers you a slice of mostly-cold pizza.

you slide to sit on the floor instead and pick the onions and bell peppers off the piece of pizza. your stomach turns. thuds and bangs echo through the house, and then its a terrible jerky screech as schlatt and quackity drag wilbur's old executive desk down the hall and through the front door. the corners dig lines into the linoleum and papers and knickknacks are strewn through the whole house.

there's tax records in there, you say, watching a wheat penny skid beneath the couch. they're in the second drawer on the left. and probably the deed, too.

schlatt makes a dismissive noise. don't need 'em. he doesn't say anything else, so you don't either.

as they're turning it through the front door, you watch schlatt grab a silver ring from a rolled-open drawer. he turns it over in his hand before passing it to quackity, who slips it on his finger and examines it under the light. don't get any ideas, honey, schlatt grumbles, and quackity squawks something about schlatt running out on him as they push the desk the rest of the way through the door. they both cackle as it tumbles down the front porch stairs.

you lean forward to pick up an old microwave manual and a receipt for a goodwill donation. for a moment, you can almost pretend you're just spring cleaning while wilbur files your stupid taxes; tommy shredding shit you don't need anymore and threatening to shove your fingers into the blades; fundy sorting grocery receipts. then schlatt slams the front door shut, and the house shakes, and they laugh the whole way down the hall to wilbur's room, quackity still watching the ring sparkle as he turns his hand this way and that. their conversation grows muffled behind the locked bedroom door.

you stare down the hall from your place on the floor. the rain rattles against the house. there're splinters in your hands. you feel like you missed your opportunity to cry about it all, so you finish your pizza instead, even the crusts. then you pull yourself to you feet, socks squelching in your dress shoes, and grab another trash bag and your hoodie from the coat closet.

slowly, you creep through the front door and down the steps, past schlatt's pontiac, and begin hunting through the bags and piles of your whole life for anything you can save.

#block party #things i make #dsmp #dream smp #tubbo #dream smp fanfiction #i dont write that often anymore and this is only a second draft bjt honestly thats more than i used to do anyway so. im pleased enough #happy november 16th heres a piece about manberg beginnings in block party #second person pov #my writing

72 notes · View notes