Page 29 of All I Wank for Christmas

He walks across the roof of the porch to the first window, looks in, shrugs, and tiptoes to the next one. He lifts the window, and it doesn’t budge. So much for rural people leaving their doors and windows unlocked. The Helmcamp house is locked up tighter than a nun's knees.

Jasper stands on the roof with his hands on his hips and looks around. The attached garage is next to the porch, and Jasper studies at it for a moment. It would be a big jump to get to the sloped roof of the garage, and it’s possible he could miss, roll off the roof, and then we’d be in a medical emergency pickle.

He crouches into a runner position, and I open my mouth to stop him just as a light goes on in the room Jasper’s standing in front of. The sudden brightness startles him, and he reels back, waving his hands for balance.

I scream. I can’t help it. It’s a blood-curdling scream like in horror movies. I hear it and know it’s my mouth making the noise, but I have no control over it. It just escapes, and I don’t even cover my mouth.

My scream must startle him more, but he doesn’t fall off the roof. Another light clicks on in the house – this one downstairs – as Jasper reaches out and grabs the aluminum drainpipe. Unfortunately, the drainpipe can’t hold his weight and peels away from the house with a sickening scratching sound like nails on a chalkboard. Tara’s present falls out of the front of his bibs and lands in a bush.

Jasper falls into the tree and dangles in the branches, kicking his legs. The door swings open, and a naked man with white chest hair comes out, a shotgun in his thick hands. “Freeze, pervy mother fucker!”

Jasper’s eyes widen and he goes still, his mouth wide open like he wants to defend himself but can’t think of how to do it. He’s no match for a gun, and what can he say to explain why he’s in bib overalls and assless chaps while sneaking around on this man’s roof. What is the man supposed to think? Of course, he’ll think Jasper is peeping or up to other shenanigans.

“If you run away before the cops get here, I’ll pump you so full of lead, the EPA will quarantine your body,” the man says, chewing his lip like it’s a habit to chew a toothpick.

“Cops are on the way, Don,” a woman says from the doorway. She’s in a floral bathrobe and wraps another bathrobe around her husband. “You don’t want to be naked when the sheriff gets here.”

Jasper pulls himself so that the branch he’s holding is under his armpits, but he doesn’t move. He doesn’t speak. He stares at the man with the gun on him.

Fear overtakes me, and I double over, dry heaving on a nearby bush. Nothing comes up since I haven’t eaten in hours, but my stomach tightens. My throat burns with the effort. What the fuck do I do? Do I charge the guy with the gun and risk getting shot? Even if the man isn’t a jerk, startling him while he’s holding a gun is idiotic.

Minutes pass, and the man’s wife brings him slippers to stand in and leans in the doorway watching Jasper dangle from a branch. This night can’t get any worse.

Until it does…

A police car rolls up the rocky driveway, the crunch of the tires breaking the silence. The doors open and Officers Lyle and Coop slowly get out of the car. Coop adjusts his belt while Lyle talks into the radio on his shoulder, saying something I can’t hear.

Lyle and Coop both come into the parlor on teambuilding days. I don’t know much about their life situations since neither man wears a wedding ring when in the parlor, but Lyle’s dick matches his build – short and stocky with a patch of graying pubic hair. Coop is tall and skinny with a pencil dick to match. Both guys are decent enough to my coworkers and me during their visits, but they’re cold. Frigid. They don’t talk much except to each other. They’re the perfect police partners, able to communicate with each other by eye contact and facial expressions.

“What the heck?” Coop asks, strolling toward the tree and house, his hand on his taser.

Great. More tasers.

“What’s going on, Don?” Lyle asks, approaching Mr. Helmcamp.

Mr. Helmcamp lowers his gun and nods at Jasper. “Some kind of freak sneaking around on the roof outside Tara’s room. He may be a pervert.”

Oh. Fuck. It’s not enough that Jasper was caught. He was caught outside their daughter’s room.

Lyle rubs his face and looks at Jasper. “You want to tell us why you’re hanging in a tree and why you’re sneaking around outside a little girl’s room?”

Jasper must grasp the severity of the situation because he curses before groaning. “I’m going to drop down now. My arms are tired holding on to this branch. I won’t run.”

Coop nods and grunts in affirmation, and Jasper drops to the ground in a crouch position. He rises slowly, his hands in the air.

“What the fuck do you have on your arms?” Mr. Helmcamp asks.

“Are those chaps?” Lyle asks. Everyone turns in slow motion to look at him, probably wondering why he knows exactly what assless chaps look like when they’re on someone’s arms. Lyle shrugs and focuses on Jasper. “Why are you wearing chaps on your arms?”

“What kind of sick fuck are you?” Mrs. Helmcamp asks from the door.

“Answer the lady’s question,” Coop chimes in. “You know what? I don’t care to hear your bullshit because there is nothing you can say that would make this OK. Get on the ground. Hands behind your head.”

Jasper slowly drops to his knees and gets on the ground. He puts his hands behind his head as I helplessly watch Lyle approach him and run his hands over Jasper’s body, searching for a weapon. Lyle handcuffs Jasper and pulls him up. “He ain’t even wearing underwear,” Lyle says with a sneer. “No t-shirt or anything. No underwear lines under these bibs.”

“You sick, deviant piece of shit,” Coop replies, shaking his head at Jasper. He grits his teeth and flexes his fists, and I see him flick something on his shoulder as Lyle does the same. Did they turn around their body cameras? “You’re under arrest for trespassing and disorderly conduct because that’s all I can get you on without you actually getting into the house, but we don’t take kindly to perverts around these parts. I should let Don take care of it for all of society with that shotgun and tell everyone we got here too late. That’s what I want to do to guys like you.”

“It’s not what you think,” Jasper says. “I think I’m at the wrong house.”

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