For a decade, Tom worked as an editor for Cracked.com, the largest comedy site in the world with over 15 million unique monthly visits and 300 million monthly views. He created the show Junk History for Cracked's YouTube channel, as well as contributing and performing several sketches and monologues, and regularly contributing to other popular Cracked series such as After Hours, Some News, Obsessive Pop Culture Disorder, We're Not Alone, and The Stumbling Dead. He was the creator and host of the Cracked Movie Club podcast, which released weekly episodes for 50,000 listeners. He has performed standup at Westside Comedy Theater and the NerdMelt Showroom, and has toured with Unpopular Opinion's Adam Tod Brown and Jeff May. Additionally, he can run a mile in 7 minutes and can recite the entirety of Tim Burton's Batman from memory.
Video
Junk History (creator, writer, actor)
Today's Topic (writer, actor)
After Hours (writer)
Some News (writer, actor)
Honest Ads (writer, actor)
Cracked Rants (writer, actor)
We Are Not Alone (Writer)
Escort Mission (writer)
Shout! The Phone-Sharing App (sketch; writer, actor)
The Stumbling Dead (actor)
Tales To Get Scared To (actor)
Contact
ENJOY THIS FUCKING SAMPLE CHAPTER OF FEAR SHITS
BY TOM REIMANN
What a Treat for You!
Chapter One
“Pop fly, Dougie!”
I looked up from the anthill I had been studying in right field and squinted into the sky. Sure enough, a ball was blazing toward me like a comet. I barely had enough time to get my glove up before it smashed down, stinging my left arm numb. The sudden explosion of activity after spending the whole afternoon bored out of my mind in the outfield threw me off balance, and I fell down on my butt. The ball rolled away from me through the grass and I groaned miserably.
“Nice one, Ballard!” Steve DeGree said. He was the second baseman, the most popular kid in sixth grade and the best player on our team. Steve swore up and down he’d gotten a blow job from Christina Wilmont in the woods behind Greenmont Middle School over Summer Break. I’m not sure what a blow job is, but I think it means Steve pulled his pants down and Christina blew on his penis until he peed. High school kids do it all the time.
“Maybe we can dip the ball in chocolate next time and he can catch it in his big fat mouth!” Wally Turner cried. He was wearing his Big Johnson shirt again because his parents kept forgetting the uniform fee. Then Steve burst into laughter, and the rest of the team joined him. Even Coach Black chuckled and shook his head as he reached for another baseball to swat into the air. He’d taken over after Coach Henry got sick, so he’d only been our coach for a few weeks. But he was already laughing at me, too.
I watched a line of ants as they marched into the anthill, totally unaware of little league or teasing or anything else outside of their work. “You guys are lucky,” I muttered. “I wish I could crawl down there with you right now.” It almost sounded like something underground answered me, but it must’ve been the wind.
“You’re such a fuckin’ klutz, Dougie,” Wally said, trotting over from center field to scoop up the ball. Wally’s parents let him watch rated R movies, so he knew every swear word in the book. They even took him to the theater to see Rising Sun, that sex movie with Indiana Jones’s dad in it. Now Wally wouldn’t stop talking about how Japan was going to take over the world. It was really annoying.
Wally turned and fired the ball to Steve at second base. Steve caught it easily, still laughing, and rolled it back to Coach Black at home plate, who stopped the ball with his foot and kicked it behind him toward the cage.
“Let’s try that again, Dougie,” said Coach Black, and before I’d fully gotten back to my feet, he hit me a grounder.
I tried my best to spring into action, but my cleats tangled up beneath me and I went down again, falling face first into the grass just in time to watch the ball come thundering up and crash into my nose at a hundred billion miles per hour. I saw stars, and hot boogery blood gooped out over my lips.
“Yikes,” I heard Coach Black say. “You got some kind of inner ear problem, Dougie?”
“Nah, he’s just so heavy he can’t stay up!” Steve laughed, hooting like a big mean owl. Steve is the coolest, but he doesn’t like me because I’m not good at baseball. “He’s like a hippo on stilts!”
“Shut it,” snapped Coach Black, his tone suddenly sharp. I couldn’t tell if he was irritated by Steve’s idea that someone would make stilts for hippos or if he was genuinely worried about me. “You ok, Dougie?”
I tried to answer, but as soon as I opened my mouth a big wad of booger blood ran in and I spat it out onto the ants. Sorry, guys. I guess everyone gets picked on by somebody, I thought.
“Wally, see if he’s okay,” Coach Black said.
“He’s fine,” Wally said immediately, watching an airplane pass overhead.
Coach Black sighed. “Get over there and check on him before I kick your dick so hard it shoots out of your asshole.”
Everyone gasped. I’d never heard swearing like that before in my life, except on that Sam Kinison tape Wally has in his room. Sam Kinison was a motorcycle priest who yelled at ladies until he had a heart attack and died. Or maybe I’m thinking of the Andrew Dice Clay tape. Whichever one it was, my mom wouldn’t buy it for me. The swears that had just come out of Coach Black’s mouth were worse than anything on those tapes anyway, because they weren’t funny. Coach Black was new, and we didn’t know him that well. Somehow, it made his swearing scary.
I turned to look at Wally. Even in the warm afternoon sunlight he looked pale, like he’d just unwrapped a foot for Christmas. “Um, ok,” he said quietly. Wally walked over and crouched down next to me, putting a hand on my shoulder.
“Uh, you okay, Dougie?” he asked. Even though he was talking to me, he was still staring at Coach Black.
I sniffed, wiping away a thick glob. More blood dripped onto the grass. “I think so. But my nose is busted,” I said.
“Yeah, it doesn’t look broke, though. You’re gonna need to plug that up with your mom’s tampons before your brain falls out.” Wally laughed shakily.
I didn’t know what a tampon was, but I knew if Wally mentioned my mom, he was making fun of me. “Shut up, Wally,” I said, struggling back to my feet.
“Well?” Coach Black called. “How’re you doing, Dougie?”
“He says he’s okay,” Wally answered. He still looked pale. “His nose is bleeding.”
It might have been a trick of the light, or maybe I just wasn’t seeing so clearly after getting hit by a baseball, but for half a second a huge grin flashed across Coach Black’s face. An ugly Halloween grin, like the teeth of a skeleton with bits of skin still hanging off it. I thought of the cover of one of those heavy metal CDs in Wally’s garage that had given me nightmares for 27 weeks. But then I blinked, and the grin was gone, if it had ever even been there.
“Why don’t you hit the bench?” he suggested. “We’ll take a look at that nose.”
There was a long silence as I trudged over to the dugout of our practice field. Coach Black watched me intently the whole way over, his baseball bat resting against his right shoulder. It was like he had completely forgotten about the rest of the team. I’ve been picked on almost nonstop since third grade; Steve gets sad when I’m not in school and calls my house to tease me. But this was the weirdest, most uncomfortable baseball practice I’d ever experienced. The rest of the team looked like they thought so, too.
“Uh, Coach?” Steve asked hesitantly. “Are we going to run more drills, or…?”
Coach Black turned his head impossibly slowly to look at Steve. It seemed to take ages. The only sound was the whispering of the leaves rustling in the light breeze, and the owls beginning to beatbox as evening approached.
“What?” Coach Black asked. His voice sounded strange. Like it was too far away and too close at the same time.
Steve DeGree, the most popular kid in sixth grade, the kid who played every single sport and was the best at all of them, the kid who supposedly got his penis blown on by Christina Wilmont, looked uncertain for the first time I could ever remember. Maybe for the first time in his whole life.
“Um, I mean, do you want us to pair off?” Steve stammered, doing his best not to look Coach Black in the eyes and still maintain the swaggering confidence that made him Steve DeGree. He was like Leonardo, if the Ninja Turtles were mean to me. “While you look at Dougie’s nose?”
“I want you to stop talking before I bite your tongue out of your head,” Coach Black said. His tone was casual, like he was asking Steve to go and grab his clipboard from the dugout. “I’ll chew it up and spit it back down your throat. How about that?”
Steve shut his mouth, his teeth clacking loudly. Coach Black turned back to me. I was tilting my head up with my hand underneath my nose to try and stop the bleeding, but I could feel the sticky wetness running down my cheeks and dripping off my chin onto my uniform. It’s a good thing we’re the Cardinals, I thought as I watched Coach Black down the bridge of my crushed nose.
The whole team was frozen in place. Everyone seemed to be holding their breath. Even the owls had ceased their night hype and fallen silent, like they do when they sense a storm is coming. Coach Black made his way around the cage behind home plate, his head swiveling slowly on his neck so that his eyes wouldn’t leave my bleeding face. He never once looked where he was going. He just marched relentlessly towards the dugout, his face completely blank, like one of the mugshots at the post office that scared me so bad I had to wait in the car. As I watched him with panic steadily clawing up my stomach, I noticed the dusty aluminum bat was still resting on his shoulder.