“Phew,” he sighed. “Please don’t go out unless you absolutely must. There are too many fans out there right now.”
Inside my door, I saw a larger pile of mail than normal. Lying on top of my mail were cards simply addressed to Ryan Christensen. I shook my head in disbelief.
He smiled quickly at me when I returned, then resumed his actions with the controller. He and Jason were playing the ninja game, both of them were swinging and punching their controllers in the air. It was slightly amusing watching them play.
“This is like a freaking workout!” Ryan groaned.
I sorted through the mail; Electric bill, two credit card solicitations, new clothing magazine, and a few other random pieces of junk mail were mixed in with his fan mail.
I held up the envelopes that were addressed to Ryan and waved them in the air.
“What’s that?” he asked, swinging his arm to kill the pretend bad guy on the television screen.
“Ryan Christensen fan mail,” I announced.
“You’re kidding!” he scoffed. “Just throw them in the trash.”
I was dying of curiosity to see what his fans were writing to him about. “Can I open one?”
He grimaced at me. “Why the hell would you want to do that? Honey, you really don’t want to see that. Just throw them away.” He laughed. “Good hit, Jay!”
I figured he really didn’t care, so I ripped open the top envelope. Inside was a card with hearts drawn on it and the girl who sent it even conveniently enclosed her picture with a phone number. He was right; these women were beyond delusional.
“What do you think, Honey? Is that psychotic fan the one for me?” He laughed, eyeing me as I looked at the girl’s picture.
“Maybe! She looks sort of desperate!” I teased.
“Can I see?” Jason reached for the picture. “Dude, look at this chick!” He handed the picture to Shawn.“Damn!” Shawn choked. “She’s a two bagger!”
Ryan started laughing. “Okay, let me see.” He put the game on pause and pulled the picture out of Shawn’s hand.
“What’s a two bagger?” I asked.
Jason was laughing too hard to respond.
“A two bagger is where the chick is so ugly that you both have to wear bags over your heads. That way if her bag falls off while you’re doing her, you don’t get blinded by the ugly,” Shawn explained.
“Are there any more pictures?” Jason asked.
I pulled the envelopes out of the trash can and opened them one by one. I didn’t bother to pull the cards out; I just looked inside for pictures.
There were four pictures altogether. One of the fans was gracious enough to show her breasts in her picture. I handed them all over to the boys. I looked in the last envelope to make sure I didn’t miss an enclosure when I noticed that a picture of some girl was glued to the inside of the card.
Oh my God. I gasped and pulled the entire card out of the envelope. There she was, the curly-haired, gap-toothed, psycho fan. The card was covered in glossy snippets of Ryan’s face that she obviously cut out of many different magazines. She had included her face in some of the pictures next to his face, replacing Suzanne’s face with her own. Scribbled all around their pictures were “I Love You” and “I Love Charles” sentiments. Her name was Angel.
Visions of this whacko taking the time to cut out Ryan’s face and glue each piece to this card freaked me out. It felt hard to swallow. I couldn’t get the card out of my hand quick enough; my fingers fumbled it into the garbage can and I ran to the bathroom to wash my hands. Fear and panic
struck me; this was beyond admiration, and this particular psycho fan was just outside my front door.
I was shaking slightly as I folded Ryan’s clothing that I gathered from the dryer. I could clearly see why he was terrified. For a moment, I was terrified too. I placed his clean clothing on the bed while my emotions did a slow boil. How dare they, all of them, do this to him… to us!
I grabbed my cell phone and marched to the front window. There were so many people down on the street you would have thought we were having a street fair.
“Yes, this is Taryn Mitchell. I’m calling from 114 South Fourth Street, Mitchell’s Pub. I’d like to report a large crowd blocking street traffic. There are also a lot of people loitering in front of my business. I’d like them to be told to leave. Thank you.”
Ryan chuckled to himself. “Calling the cops doesn’t help, but if it made you feel better, then I guess it’s worth a try.”