Leonard

Leonard was on his way home, his mind vaguely recapping his day, as usual, and he passed a stretch where the highway overlooked sleepy suburbanite condos, as usual, and he vaguely turned his mind to what it might be like to walk into those houses and kill the vague people he imagined clustered around their TV sets inside.

As usual.

Today, he put on his turn signal and took the exit. He whistled something from his teenage years and stopped at the light. There was no one else at the intersection, but he waited for the light to turn green anyway. He remembered some of the words to the chorus, and started singing under his breath.

He turned right down Hawthorn, traveling along that same row of houses he had seen from above. He stopped at the fifth one. There was a car in the driveway, so he parked at the curb.

He got out of his car and walked up the drive. He didn’t push the “lock” button on his electronic car key.

He opened the front door and walked inside. He was in a wide, white-painted livingroom with beige furniture, pastel prints in what he supposed was the southwestern style on the wall.

The boy was laying on his stomach watching the TV too closely. Leonard kicked him squarely in the temple before he had quite realized there was a stranger in the room. The boy slumped.  The Power Rangers continued their battle on the screen.

Leonard kicked him over, and stepped on his neck until he stopped breathing.

In the kitchen a woman, probably the boy’s mother, waited for something to come out of the oven, a small radio on the counter playing Neil Young. When she opened her mouth to ask who he was, he rammed her own kitchen knife into her throat. As she fell to the floor, her clutching hand grabbed for something, anything, and she pulled a dish towel off the handle of the oven door, and it fluttered to cover her face.

Leonard slid his grip off the handle of the knife, and turned toward a new noise. Someone upstairs had called out: the dead woman’s name was Elizabeth.

On the stairs he met a man, the third in the middle-American triptych, and held out his hand in greeting. The man paused, held out his hand to shake Leonard’s, asked who and plummeted to the floor below, landing, sprawled.

Leonard had turned and stepped quickly down to land on the man’s chest. One foot on the chin and a quick pivot pushed the man’s head far enough to one side to break his neck, and Leonard stepped down and went to the front door.

He grabbed the doorknob, slid his fingers around it as he opened the door, then turned to do the same on the outer knob as he pulled the door shut behind him.

Back in his car, he turned his radio on, and it was playing the song he’d been singing.

He went home to his wife and daughter in a good mood.

 

[Note: I actually had a friend mention this story while telling me I was unsafe to be around his kids. He later apologized, and his kid calls me “Uncle.” I am not sure, but I think I may be flattered?]