Skips Soda Fountain

It was a long time ago. Hinkley Hills was a lot smaller then, safer too. You never had to lock your doors. Everybody knew everybody. I must have been maybe nine, ten years old. You know where the big mall is? There used to be a big drugstore on the corner there. It had a big soda fountain. The guy who ran it was a rotund guy, had glasses. His name was Skip. Lived over on Elm. Had a wife, a couple kids. Not too sharp. The guy's 40 years old, he's wearing a paper hat and making cherry Cokes. Anyway, it got hot that summer. It got real hot. It was sweltering. That heat where your underwear sweats and it crawls up the...Anyway, it's hot, okay? And they start smelling this really vile stench over on Elm...and they figure it's comin' from Skip's place. No one wants to say anything. Do you knock on the guy's door, "Hi, your house stinks"? So people are trying to ignore it, right? They're trying to pretend it isn't happening. You know those pine things? They're trying to cover up with those pine things that you can put in cars. People are hanging those on their porches. Let me tell you what happened next. The state health inspector shows up. They talk to Skip. He says he's got a sump pump problem. They leave. The guy's got a sewer problem. He says he'll look after it. Everything's okay, right? Wrong. A couple hours later... there's smoke pouring out of the windows of Skip's house. The firemen go in. Know what they find? Skip's family, dead. Murdered...
by Skip... weeks earlier... with an ice pick. Yeah, the guy killed his whole family...With an ice pick. Yeah. Yeah, just put 'em in the cool basement...covered 'em up with a sheet and went back to makin' treats for the townsfolk. Only Skip didn't count on there being a big heat wave that summer. You know what all those people were smelling on Elm? Skip's family's bodies...decomposing in the summer heat. Apparently, one day Skip made Just one-too-many lemon phosphates. El snappo. They tore down the soda fountain that fall.


This is my own interpretation of a 1950's advertisement for 'Skips Soda Fountain' which is mentioned in one of my favorite ever movies 'The Burbs'.

Shaun.