Rivalry Read Free

house, but this wasn’t it. So when we started to leave Doug’s room and go back to the kitchen, I thought it was my overactive imagination when I saw a brief flicker of movement in the reflection of Doug’s TV screen.
    He must have seen me hesitate and look back, because Doug let out a nervous laugh and grabbed my sleeve, pulling me from his room. “Come on dude, you can get your Super Mario World fix in after dinner.”
    “ Uh, yeah...okay. I just thought -”
    “ C’mon man, homework! My dad’s going to be annoyed if we don’t have it done by the time he gets home. He’s renting Total Recall tonight - I think some mutant chick shows her boobs in it.”
    I grinned. “Sweet. Okay, let’s hurry up then.”
    We plowed through our math homework and most of our English by the time Mike, Doug’s father, got home. Mike (he said “Call me Mike!”) was an accountant for the city and had just started his job in September when the family moved into town. He was friendly, asked about my mom and dad, what sorts of classes I liked, and what I thought of baseball and fishing.
    Over the course of dinner, consisting of stir-fried chicken, vegetables, and rice, I had the distinct, weird impression that I was being in some way interviewed as a friend for Doug. I made sure to avoid talking about ghosts, horror stories, exorcists, or anything else that might set off parental alarm bells. Sharon and Mike were certainly friendly, perhaps too friendly, and I began to get the feeling that if there was an interview going on, it was in the hopes that I would be a good friend for Doug, helping him get out of his shell and meet people, perhaps eventually becoming more “normal”.
    While Doug and I were clearing the table after dinner, I noticed the first sign of something distinctly...unusual. We volunteered to wash and dry and put away the dishes, and as I was working at the sink I couldn’t help but notice how so many of the ceramic plates and bowls had minor chips knocked out of them, as if they were regularly banged against each other or some other hard surface. I tried to dismiss this as just paranoia on my part, and I began to put dishes away in the cabinets above the kitchen counter. I opened one cabinet, containing mugs, glasses, plates and bowls, and put away a plate. As I turned away for a moment I heard an odd...scraping sound, coming from inside the cabinet. At first I thought I had stacked the plate wrong, and it had shifted in the cabinet, so I glanced inside.
    What I saw made my blood run cold.
    The cabinet hadn’t been a disorganized mess before, but there was no real rhyme or reason in how the contents were sorted. Now, however, everything was arranged so neatly, so precise that I would have needed a ruler to make things look so perfect. All the glasses were to one side, all the mugs on the other, everything sorted by size and even color. Whatever happened in the cabinet, it happened in just a second or two, and it happened without anyone touching the dishes.
    Anyone alive , that is.
    I looked at Doug. He must have heard the noise, but he made no indication that he thought anything unusual had happened. I washed a plate, dried it, and asked him, “Could you put this away for me?”
    Doug took the plate, reached up to put it on the shelf, and then paused. He looked at me, and I looked back at him. Doug’s parents were now in the living room watching the news, so I kept my voice low when I spoke to him.
    “ Was that, you know... it ?”
    Doug looked back towards the living room, then turned to me and nodded. “It messes with the dishes a lot; that’s why so many are broken. I’ve never seen this before. Was that the first time you looked in there?”
    “ I put a plate away and it seemed, you know, normal. But then I heard stuff move and it changed to look like that.”
    Doug just put away his plate and nodded. “Let’s just get the dishes done and not mention this to my folks, okay?”
    “