A Bad Day for Voodoo

CHAPTER 20

Can you believe it? We’re more than two-thirds into this story. Unless you’re one of those weirdos who always skips ahead to the two-thirds point of a book, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank you for sticking with me this far.

Some of you may be reading this book for school. Not as an assigned reading project like Lord of the Flies or Animal Farm, unless you have the coolest teacher ever, but maybe for a book report. Which means that around this point, you’re probably sweating and thinking, Aw, man, did I ever pick the wrong book! There’s no literary value at all! How am I going to write a report on this thing?

Don’t worry. I’ve got your back. I’ve crammed examples of everything your teacher wants to hear about into this one chapter. Pretty sweet, huh? Stephenie Meyer wouldn’t do that for you.

The four of us (Franklin was still unconscious) walked into the hallway. As I stared at Donna’s bedroom door, I couldn’t help but think that when I opened it, I would bear witness to a horrific sight. [Foreshadowing.]

The hallway was eerily silent like a graveyard at midnight. [Simile.] [Also cliche.] It was the spookiest hallway that had ever existed in any house at any point in recorded history. [Hyperbole.] I [narrator] was a quivering bowl of jelly [metaphor] as we walked down the creepy crawly corridor [alliteration].

“This hall reminds me of The Shining,” I said. [Allusion.] [Actually, that’s probably more of a reference than an allusion. An allusion would be more subtle, like if I’d said, “I feel like I’m about to walk into Room 217.”] [It’s Room 217 in the book and Room 237 in the movie. They changed it because the hotel where it was filmed had a Room 217 but not a Room 237, and they didn’t want to use a real room number, I guess because they didn’t want guests to worry about a scary, naked old woman rising out of the bathtub.]

Our footsteps squeaked like a mouse. [Personification.] [Poor writing.]

I noticed that Kelley still had a piece of my ear on her shirt. It seemed to represent how I hadn’t listened to her. [Symbolism.] I [hero] [sort of] reached Donna’s door and thought about how you shouldn’t mess with forces you don’t understand [theme] and also about how my head and foot would feel better if only I had a cool, refreshing, raspberry ice tea Snapple [product placement]. I scratched the lightning-shaped scar on my forehead [shameless rip-off of more successful authors] [quote unquote homage], thought about what I was going to post on MySpace [outdated social media reference that fails to connect with readers] and then opened the door. It was truly a horrific sight.

This chapter is kind of short, but a couple of earlier chapters ran long, so I think it’s okay to cut this one off here.