Red ink

One Halloween when I was a kid, my friend and I thought it would be a good idea to write a scary letter to our neighbours who lived across the road. Somewhere we’d heard that if you ever wrote a letter to someone in red ink, it meant that you wanted them to die. This is horrible, I know. We broke open a bic pen and smeared its red ink all over a lined piece of A4 paper with the holes punched down the side. The letter went something like this:

Dear Neighbours,

At the stroke of midnight, zombies will come and eat your brains. Whoooo! Whooooo! Whoooooooooo!

From, the zombies

I was about seven years old and I still sometimes wonder what those poor people thought when they opened their letterbox that day. I hope they weren’t scared. I hope they realized it was a couple of goofy kids who were yet to grow a conscience and understand the greater consequence of their actions. But if you’re out there, I’d like to reassure you that zombies are never going to eat your brains. Sorry for freaking you out.