Opened Windows

By J.R. Gonzalez and Devin Perches

How far would you go for the one you love?

Opened Windows is about betrayal, love, devotion, and sacrifice. Two people meet and fall in love. She betrays him in a way meant to make him go away forever, because his devotion to her scares her. After a lifetime of hurt, she cant take the chance.

Then he finds out the truth about itwhy she did it and what she went through, but in the meantime, people all around her are dying in a horrible manner that the police can only describe as spontaneous combustion, because they have no clue, until it happens again, and he thinks she might be next and decides to save her. How far would you go for the one you love?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 14, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543428346

J.R. Gonzalez

This is the sixth book by J.R. Gonzalez, who with each new book is proving that he is a master of horror; this book is a very worthy addition to that collection, originally intended to be part of a short story book, this book follows in the path of his last book, "The Wolf Man" and will be followed next by a story called "Nocturnal" which will reveal what happened to Carl Lingstrom after leaving that cliff side in his third book, "The Lingstroms." J.R. lives in Los Angeles and all of his stories take place there or end up there.

Book preview

Copyright © 2017 by J.R. Gonzalez.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2017908923

ISBN:      Hardcover             978-1-5434-2832-2

                Softcover               978-1-5434-2833-9

               eBook                     978-1-5434-2834-6

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 06/06/2017

Xlibris

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Contents

Chapter One           Dreams And Executioners

Chapter Two          Beer And Old Friends

Chapter Three        Red Nails And Puppy Tails

Chapter Four         Catching Up On Life And The Pursuit Of Something Undefined

Chapter Five          Last One To The Bar … Is Me

Chapter Six            Some Explanations At Last

Chapter Seven         Killing’s The Game And No Man Can Be Sane

Chapter Eight         Coffee, Stars, And Memories Of Danny

Chapter Nine          Back To The Present And Hold Your Breath

Chapter Ten            Short And Sweet, Then Death On The Street

Chapter Eleven       Loading, Reloading, And Samantha Returns

Chapter Twelve      Doors In The Sand

Chapter Thirteen     The World Has Moved On!

Chapter Fourteen    Three Days Later And No Closer

Chapter Fifteen       Rocky Mountain Low

Chapter Sixteen       Sam’s Coffee

Chapter Seventeen  Once More Into The Breech

Chapter Eighteen    Slug It Out

Chapter Nineteen    It All Comes Home

Chapter Twenty      Sluggin’ It Out

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Acknowledgments

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Photograph by J.R. Gonzalez

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CHAPTER ONE

Dreams and Executioners

Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things, which escape those who dream only by night.

—Edgar Allan Poe, Eleonora

I KNOW THAT I was still asleep and most likely this was just a bad dream, it had to be, because I remember going to bed and probably snoring just a bit; I was so tired that night. But something felt wrong, out of place or out of sorts, whichever phrase applied; something was very bad and I could not shake that feeling that I was in danger, nor could I wake myself for some reason and I felt that I was trying really hard to open my eyes but even they would not coope rate.

Whatever was putting that fear in the pit of my heart, it was something that was close to me now; I could feel that much but could not get a reading on it to know if it was a good thing or not, that was not revealed to me as of yet, but it soon would be. Common sense told me to wait, that if I could be patient that it would be shown to me, but the fear in the pit of my stomach told me that I didn’t have time available to me, not today anyway, and being patient was never something that you would think of if you gave me a thought. It was hard waiting out those last twenty days of Christmas, the last ten days before my birthday; if you hid my present from me somewhere in that window of time you’d better have hidden it well or it won’t be a surprise to me.

I tried to look around me. I was thinking that I was dreaming and since it was my dream that I should have some control, and after a few anxious moments that actually started to work, so I took that little victory and looked around me as much as I could, it felt familiar somehow and yet I knew that I was never there before; at least not in this life, as they say. The walls were smooth and yet rough when I touched them, a sort of dirty brown, though I thought if I scratched at them they might give a little but would hold fast if I dug too deeply. It seemed that I was in some sort of tunnel, moving along on a gurney or rolling table.

At first I was afraid, I thought that maybe I was going to be sacrificed as I saw in my history class and that was why I was on the table and could not rise off it. But I felt another presence in the area then, not that a door opened or anything but it just felt as though someone or something just joined us and I never saw or felt his approach; I say his because it was dressed in clothes that could be worn by either male or female, and yet by his bearing I was certain it was a male.

I tried to turn my head and look, but now my head was held down by my hair, attached to something below me; it gave a bit, not enough to raise my head even a quarter of an inch. Our new visitor didn’t feel evil or bad, and I thought for a moment that he was sent to calm my fears, to let me know that everything was going to be all right and I should just relax and go with the flow, as my friends would have said.

Then as hard as I tried, I could not remember much beyond the face of my friend that said that. I could remember his name, James Jackson the Third, but I knew him from school; he was a good friend that I lost track of over the years. I thought I was losing my mind then and was starting to panic when I felt that presence stir once more, telling me to calm down; as hard as that felt I managed to calm down a bit, felt my pulse slow, though I wasn’t sure if it was even me that was causing that or my new friend.

When I looked in his direction, I could not see the face, but again the rough bearing and the way he carried himself suggested a male rather than soft and possibly female. I looked again at the clothing he wore in the soft light of the hallway where we were. A hood covered the face and whatever might have been visible beyond that was hidden in the shadows. He wore a cloak or something to keep warm, though it was not cold in the hallway, so maybe it was meant more to conceal who he might be; mostly brown on the exterior and white clothing underneath that cloak. But the feeling of calm was radiating from his direction, I thought for a moment that he put his hand on my shoulder to make it easier for me to relax and go along with it.

Though he gave that feeling, I also felt that if he wanted to it could go very badly for me, that he held my life in his hands and it was up to him if I suffered or went back to live out the course of my life. I wondered then if he were a surgeon or some doctor, that I was possibly in some sort of auto accident and they were deciding what to do next, how best to care for me. So I tried to think of what could have happened but my body seemed intact and I felt no pain or real discomfort, just that fear in the pit of my stomach that wouldn’t go away. That scared me more. I thought that I was hurt so badly that I was paralyzed now, that I would never move on my own again and be strapped to a bed while life passed me by. I am embarrassed to say that I selfishly thought of what I lost rather than what I still had.

They wheeled me into a room but it looked to me no different than the hallway I was in before, and there was no door or window to help me figure anything out. The only other constant for me was the maddening feeling of not knowing what the hell was going on. I felt as though I was going insane and I needed to find out something about this place and why I was here.

Then for some reason I heard my fifth-grade teacher’s voice tell me, It doesn’t hurt to ask. The only dumb question is the one you don’t ask! and almost laughed because I could hear her voice. But when I tried to ask them, my mouth never moved. And when it did, nothing came out and there was no reaction from anyone nearby, so I knew they heard nothing either or they just didn’t care enough to answer me. For all I knew they couldn’t answer me and didn’t hear what I was saying. That was when I first realized that they were pushing me along, that much was true, but I couldn’t even see them off my peripheral vision, and again I started to laugh thinking they were dwarves and were carrying me from underneath.

Do any of you speak English? I shouted at the top of my lungs, raising my body up as much as I could with the restraints they put on me and pulling out more than a few hairs in the process.

I did feel an acknowledgment from my new friend, as though he actually heard me and answered and in my panic I missed whatever he said. It was maddening beyond measure; all of my senses were on high alert.

Then I noticed we were not moving. I stopped rolling and everyone seemed to be waiting for a sign or something, some order to do whatever the hell was next, and I almost wet my pants thinking how bad that sounded to me. I tried once more to look at my host to try and appeal to him, and I felt myself shouting at the top of my lungs, WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON! But again, that seemed to have absolutely no effect on anyone around me. It came to me then that maybe they didn’t answer because they couldn’t hear me. Just then my host leaned a bit further toward me, giving me both a shred of hope and an unnatural fear that was growing by the minute and I felt that I could not escape.

There was nothing remarkable about him from where I was. He did seem to be tall, possibly around six feet or more, but not fat or even muscular and yet I felt a great strength coming from him.

Although, as I said, his clothing seemed to be made to conceal him or confuse me as to whom he might be, he didn’t seem malicious, so maybe it was the possibility of what he might do that was scaring me.

Suddenly a bright light flashed in the hallway and then the far-off sound of thunder boomed through the area, stunning me with its volume although no one else reacted to the sound or seemed to be frightened by it in the least, making me wonder if they were all deaf. The one thing it did do though—and I could tell by the bearing of my host that it infuriated him and that he didn’t see it coming—was that it partially revealed his face to me for that flash of an instant and then I knew that he wasn’t afraid of the lightning or thunder or whatever the hell it was because it could not hurt him; he was already dead and he wasn’t the benevolent spirit that I hoped for.

I turned my face toward the sound as a natural reaction, and so I was able to see that the walls were indeed cut out of the sand or dirt and I was probably deep underground somewhere, being dragged through a maze of tunnels to where I could not have guessed. But I saw him now as he was moving, and either the movement he made or some part of the breeze moved his hood just enough that I could see his neck and part of his face—and as it turned out, much more than I really wanted to see, and yet that was what saved me.

Looking toward the room they were headed to, I could see that there were several of those implements of torture devices spread throughout the room. They were going to have some fun with me, that much was clear. I looked at my host to see what he was going to do next when I saw that his skin seemed to be made up of thousands of maggots and other worms, bugs, and other things squirming around and over each other while trying to get out of the light, which really seemed to hurt them and was making me sick.

I knew who my host was now, an executioner from a long time ago, at a time when beheading was the preferred brand of justice, the usual way to carry out your sentence no matter how minor it might be.

There were no real courts in those days. Arguments were made in front of the king and his advisors. Whoever was in the court’s favor at the moment or presented the best argument won, even without proper evidence sometimes. And other times they were bored and weren’t really paying much attention; they would fall asleep or declare in favor of whoever was speaking at the moment, just be done with it, and move on to the next travesty of justice. Other times it was some minions that the king set up for the hearing and they would decide who was going to walk away that day and who might be going to prison or worse. Oftentimes there was no real evidence presented; more often than not it was the one that argued the best, it was your word against theirs, and the one with the best argument convinced them of your guilt or innocence.

This executioner was not always that way. At one time his father held high hopes for him, wanted him to be a physician, and his mother was just so happy that he seemed happy and well adjusted that she ignored the signs that there was something very evil about her son. She hoped and prayed that she was the only one that ever noticed because her greatest fear was that they would take him away and he’d be all alone with his demons and no one to help him.

He lived a normal life as a child. His mother doted on him and his father tried to toughen him but fell short. Frustrated and angry, he would blame her for his shortcomings, and it was true. He would scold the boy and she would run to him and try to soothe him, make him feel better, until he held no respect for her.

One day, his father was out in the fields working when he was caught up in the thresher and died before they could get him to a physician, who immediately told them that there was nothing he could do to help him because he was too far gone and too much blood was lost. His uncle saved them from the street. As was the fashion, he married her and took over the family. He was a widower himself with a young daughter two years older than her son was and they decided to try and make it work. But it all turned to the worse for him around the age of sixteen when the love he felt for his elder sister became too much for him to ignore. He was obsessed with her from the first time he saw her and felt he must have her, that no one else could ever make her as happy as he could, no one else would understand her as he could. If only he could make her understand. She knew what he wanted. It was impossible to ignore him; she felt his eyes on her whenever she entered the room, but she would never return the interest. Just the thought of it sickened her. She only hoped that he would come to his senses and he would see why it was wrong.

His argument was that since she was only a half-sister and not of his blood that it was all right. He tried to tell her that but she would never listen, she wouldn’t hear of it no matter how hard he argued for it.

He told her that it was all right because of that, but in her mind she could never see him as anything but a brother and felt unnatural to her, but it was more because she didn’t like what he had in mind for her.

One day, he cut a hole in his closet. Hers was the next room and he cut the hole while she was away, cleaned the mess, and put a cardboard over the hole that matched the wall so she wouldn’t know unless she got really close. Then he started to masturbate while he watched her when she bathed in the tub in her room or when she tried to change her clothes. He found that if he went there and opened the door and blocked off all light in his room that he could watch her unseen. It came to a head when she felt his eyes on her and discovered his secret and confronted him, rushing to his room and demanding that he stop at once. She was sickened to see that he still had an erection. Thinking that he could make her understand, he tried again to explain to her why he thought it was not wrong, but once again she refused to listen to him. And as he tried to speak and pull up his pants he fell face forward and it took him several moments to get his bearings.

She left him there, his lust for her unsatisfied, and she ran out the door and to the garden, ignoring his erection and what he wanted; he didn’t notice that she ran out of the house crying hysterically.

He tried to follow her when he heard her outside, rushing out of the door a few moments later. He found that she was gone and he couldn’t see her in any direction that he looked. He gave up after a while and waited for her at home.

They found her body a few weeks later, eaten by animals. Her once-so-soft skin ravaged by exposure, her naked and broken body was found in a ditch by the road. From what they saw, it was reported that someone took her that day, raped her continuously and who knew what other degradations she suffered through before he tossed her aside like garbage that he had no further use for. The executioner took it hard. He knew it was his fault she was out there in the first place and he never got over it. There were rumors of a man that was passing alone through the area. Few remembered seeing him, and no one could describe him in any detail; they only remembered that he was riding on a donkey that pulled an old wooden wagon behind him with an indistinct image on the side that might have been a faded drawing of a monkey riding on some kind of blade.

The executioner spent the next few years roaming through areas where he might be found. There were thousands of small camps of wanderers he came across while trying to find her killer but it was no use. Then one day he was wandering through a forest, and when he came to the other side he found himself near a strange castle and discovered that there was a public execution slated for that day and two of the men were being punished for rape and murder as well as other serious crimes. Thinking that he might find his sister’s killer among them he attended. But he was so far removed from the man he was before all of this happened that his mother would not recognize her now.

As he stood in the crowd he was fascinated by one of the executioners and couldn’t take his eyes off the man. Not because he was beautiful; he wore a hood, after all, and you never saw his features. But instead he watched him because this man was a master at his craft. That day he arrived early because he wanted to make sure that he saw everything; he wanted to imagine that one of these was the man that killed his sister, and further, imagined that he was the one chopping the man’s head off.

Then he heard the crowd as they shouted for justice, but that wasn’t what they wanted; they were out for blood and would be satisfied with nothing less. They didn’t care about the crimes committed or about the corporal punishment that was handed out that day, though they did get excited when some were given the lash. All they wanted and cared about was the blood. It was all they came to see, and most of them, if they could have their way, would have been more than happy to bathe in it.

He watched the first execution. It was a double hanging and they were only a few feet in front of him, so he saw and heard everything. One of them, a man, was crying, asking for one more day in the sun, one more chance to prove how sorry he was and that he would never do it again if only they’d give him just one more day, one more chance to prove he was better now.

He was fascinated with the second one though. It was a woman. She was found guilty of double murders after she caught her husband in bed with her sister and almost killed two others that held her from killing more until the authorities arrived. She was the first woman hanged in these parts for as long as anyone could remember, unless you counted the witches. Of course, they were hung to keep their hands clean of the blood, allowing them to sleep at night with as little as they could manage after what they did.

She was on the end nearest to where the executioner stood. He couldn’t take his eyes off her twitching body as she died fighting for one more breath, her voice muffled as she kicked, struggled, and died. It was a different executioner that did the first beheading. It was disappointingly amateurish and clumsy. The prisoner tried to get up and run after the axe came down and took only three-fourths of his neck. The crowd roared lustily at the sight of him running with his head hanging off and some of them moved closer, letting the blood splatter on their faces, and they quickly rubbed into their skin while others licked it off their fingers and each other.

The final execution was the one that did it for him. When the other executioner came out the crowd was shouting, whipped into a bloody frenzy as they smelled blood in the water. They circled back and forth around the platform as they waited for it to continue. The ones in the front danced as if the devil was fighting for their souls at that moment and they weren’t going to win no matter the outcome. As he walked out before the prisoner, the crowd went silent though he never spoke a word, didn’t bother to hold his hand up to calm them; it was his presence alone that quieted them. He walked out holding his head high, never looking left or right as he walked, yet he never stumbled or lost his footing, whereas the earlier executioner never raised his head until he lifted his axe and was clearly too nervous. Carrying out the sentence without a word, it was so quiet the only sound was a grunt when he brought the axe down, cleanly severing the head from the body and dropping it into the basket and the sound of his blood draining out through the jugular vein and carotid arteries and spilling onto the grass below. The body twitched for a few moments and then stopped. The crowd began to murmur again but it was much calmer and quieter than they were before, more under control.

He followed the man home and asked to be apprenticed to him. At first the man refused, saying he didn’t need the competition and didn’t have the time nor patience, but the man obliged him after being told the reason why. All the men and women and a couple of children that stood before him and faced his axe died, every single one. His record was clean and unblemished until he met me. I was the one that escaped, and that was what drove him insane even now. I got away and his work was not finished, and therefore he could never rest until I died at his hands. He chased me through all of time to accomplish that.

I was innocent but he didn’t care about that. It wasn’t his business to determine that; his duty was to carry out the sentence. That I eluded him for so long should have told him that I was innocent, but as I said, he didn’t care.

Maybe it was all too much for my mind with all the rest of what was going on. I was confused because instead of being scared as I knew I should have been I was wondering how old he must be by now, how he kept alive for all this time, staying the same and feeding on nothing but his hatred for me, but I finally came to my senses when he moved. When he turned back to me he raised the broad axe high over his head and was about to bring it down, and I heard him grunt as he used all his strength to bring it down before I could get away and he could remove my head. I screamed as loud as I could and tried to get away but there was no escape from this. I moved too slowly. He brought the blade down quickly and evenly, the rusty and blood crusted blade flashed in the dark and came down singing toward me.

That’s when I sat up in my bed, my scream echoing away as the cobwebs left me. I could hear the blade as it crashed down into the cot beneath my head, the gurgling sounds as I died fading as I was now waking up in a cold sweat. That started a coughing fit while I was trying to shake off the image as I also fought with the tangled covers tying up my legs while I tried to get out of bed. Feeling a thirst like no other, I ran to the sink and turned on the faucet, putting my face under the water as it flowed down. I tried to drink as much as I could until I began to choke and then just leaned into the sink and let the water run over the back of my head.

This was a nightmare I suffered through for most of my early childhood, a bad dream that was so real to me that my parents took me to see a psychiatrist so they could get it out of my head and I recall being grateful for that because at least they tried to help me to maybe understand it, to help me come to grips with it instead of telling me it wasn’t real or telling me there were no monsters in the world. Yet I felt as though it was a waste of time and maybe even money because it only helped for a little while. Deep inside I knew that the bad dreams would always be back.

There were several versions of this nightmare. The one where I was able to move at the last moment and escape the blade scant microseconds before it would have cut off my head and close enough that it cut my hair, which was already closely cropped and now a few inches shorter. Other times it was so close that I moved sideways and it still caught the tip of my earlobe, slashing it open and letting the blood flow, though it was not that deep or serious once I stopped the bleeding. I would run screaming into my parents’ room, hysterically incoherent, and they could not calm me no matter what they tried and I’d refuse to leave the room. I would climb in between them before they could stop me and watch the door while they slept, but my eyes never closed on those days.

Sometimes I would have to fight to stay with them because my father would stop me. I would stand in the corner shivering because I was even too afraid to bring a blanket with me when I made my narrow escape. They would tell me again to go to my own room and sleep in my bed but I couldn’t move even if they threatened me with punishment or the room was on fire. They would have to drag me out kicking and screaming, as insane as that sounds now. Other times I had the dream and felt I couldn’t tell them about it, and on those nights they would find me on the floor at the foot of their bed. Through different doctors and varying methods of their treatments I was finally able to figure some of it out and how I was able to deal with it, come to some kind of understanding. Every so often I would be foolish and convince myself that I somehow found a way to shake it off, that I was cured and it would never return, the nightmare was never over.

Until this day, it hadn’t returned and was almost forgotten, a faded memory of something dark, but now seemed to be back in my head and I had no idea why. Even more so, I couldn‘t tell what it meant this time, and to me that was scary enough. Maybe it was the stress of my life at the time. Losing both your parents is a scary feeling because though we all know we are going to die one day it’s still something you don’t expect to happen, and it’s worse when they are the rock in your life and it makes no sense, and probably a lot worse when they both go together and so suddenly. You don’t depend on them for a living because they raised you better than that, but the fall back option is always there because they are your parents after all. I used to kid with my mom. She would tell me that she loves me and that she was proud of me, and I answered that it was in her contract.

At first she didn’t know what that meant. She didn’t know what a contract was because she never needed or signed one in her life; my father took care of all of that and she never worked. "What contract, mijo? she would ask in all seriousness. She would wait patiently for an answer. The mom and son contract. When they brought me to you and Dad, it said you would always love me no matter what!" and then we would laugh about it. That had worked every time.

The funny thing was, now that she was gone and I couldn’t go to her, I knew in my heart that if my life was spent building little piles of shit and then walking through them and starting over she would still find something to be proud of in me. My father was the same but he was more reserved and quiet about it. He kept it to himself unless he felt he had to share for some reason—a special occasion, a life-changing event—but I knew they loved me and would be there for me. That was what I was thinking about when I woke up from that nightmare on this morning and greeted another shitty day in paradise.

When I spent time with my father, a lot of the time it was more quiet and reserved, though we did some things that took a lot of energy. Those times became more special later in my life, when he was gone and there was no way to talk to him about them. We spent a lot of summers camping as a family. That was special in itself, but we also spent hours playing catch with a baseball. He taught me how debilitating the three-pointer could be in basketball and he threw a great spiral if I ran the route he sent me on; not bad for someone that never played on an organized team until well after high school when he played softball in an industrial league. I remember the time he and my uncle Chito took me to my first baseball game, and it was epic for a lot of reasons, though I didn’t know it at the time. He took me to see Sandy Koufax pitch for the Dodgers at a time when the rivalry between the Dodgers and Giants was really heated up. We hated those guys as much as they hated us, but it was a respectful hatred, not like it became later when the fans became too rabid, forgot it was a game and let it get out of hand.

My father taught me that it was one thing to like a team and follow them but entirely another to really get into the team, not just to follow them but to live in the season they played in, to root for them no matter the outcome or what it said on the scoreboard. I don’t know if he rooted for them when they were called The Bridegrooms because seven were married that season, or the Trolly Dodgers before they left Brooklyn and came to Los Angeles, but he did for all the time I knew him.

As I grew up, I found memories of my own to cherish. Like many Dodger fans, I will never forget how it felt when Kirk Gibson came off the bench, too injured to play or even walk to the plate without a noticeable hitch in his giddyup, and yet he hit that homerun that took the wind out of the Oakland A’s and carried us through them to bring home the World Series trophy. I remember guys like Ron Cey, who many thought was too short to play and yet held his own in the infield along with Bill Russell, Steve Garvey and Davey Lopes, the guy whose name infuriated my father to no end. He told me once that even Davey Lopes mispronounced his name and that he was LopeZ and not Lopes. It made me laugh, but not when my father was around.

I had those memories and ever since then it’s been good, then bad, then good, then bad, and more of the same. They get my hopes up and then fade out and go home for the rest of the year, and I tell myself, Maybe next year! But if that next year never comes, I will still always root for my Dodgers, win, lose, or draw, as my mother would say. But she would also tell me, Don’t bet with your heart. You have to be smarter than that! A lesson I never learned. That was the season for Orel Hershiser as well, pitching the decisive game against the Mets, then going against the heavily favored A’s and coming off the bench to seal game five for us. He also brought home the scoreless inning record that year, fifty-nine innings. That streak started in the sixth inning in August 30 against the Expos, to the tenth inning of a September game against the Padres.

CHAPTER TWO

Beer and Old Friends

Dreams that do come true can be as unsettling as those that don’t.

—Brett Butler, Knee Deep in Paradise

I WENT TO the refrigerator to get a cold beer and it was empty. The only things in there were some brown, wilted flowers leftover from the funeral and a half gallon of milk that was curdled and almost empty. Most people would be conflicted by that and would never ever think of having a beer for breakfast but then they weren’t me, they didn’t walk in my shoes, and no idea of the life I led. They were as ignorant of my reasonsfor it as I was of theirs against it. For some reason I spent several moments standing there in front of the empty refrigerator, just staring into it as if I was trying to decide what I wanted to eat. I remembered that I did that as a little boy too, and it drove my mother crazy ’cause I could never explain why. But I think that I was trying to remember how the flowers got in there because I knew that I didn’t bring them with me, it wasn’t something that I would do. It seemed really important but I didn’t know why and how long they were there, but I stopped trying to figure it out after a moment. It’s funny but I do recall little things though, such as closing the door softly as if I wanted to see if the light really went off when I closed the door; why that was important to me at that moment I could never guess. The thing that made it perfect was after all of that I would turn and she would be there, watching her son and trying to figure out in her old-school style if her son was crazy or just having fun with her. But whatever the time and situation, I knew right then that I needed a beer so badly that I couldn’t stan d it.

Then I checked the time and realized the entire day slipped by. It was coming to me then, a slong, winding tream of days and weeks and who knew how much more just slipped away from me and that was it going on for too long. It wasn’t really late, so I got dressed and decided I needed to get to the store, to get out of this house and maybe clear my thoughts, get a grip on what might be going on and decide how I should go from here. Maybe I was just getting lazy but I hated going out that night. I knew that I also was on my last cigarette, so I put on my coat and tried to be strong, but it wasn’t working. I was so comfortable at the moment, living there alone since my parents died. I had no one else to send to the store, so it had to be me. But I guess I am getting ahead of myself here. When I came here I really needed the break, the chance to recharge my batteries.

For a while I was living with someone when suddenly she changed her mind about me and it was over in a flash. I felt like a cockroach caught when the lights suddenly came on and nowhere to hide. It was about that time that I got the news that they died and I needed to come home. My parents died together in a car crash about two years before that, and it took that long for the bad news to find me. There were also some allegations of malfeasance, but it was just rumors and innuendo and there was never a serious or even cursory investigation at the time. They left me this house with a small yard in front with a chain link fence surrounding it but no mortgage, and as I said, since there was no one else I could send to the store I had no choice. I knew it was true that as the proverbial chicken I came home to roost. At that point I knew that it was either that or the streets for me and I couldn’t live off the streets. Not that I thought I was too good or anything. I admired the people that had made their own way no matter what else anyone thought, except of course when it was cold outside or rainy weather set in.

That night I was thinking that I could have set a nice fire in that huge fireplace in the living room and maybe cracked open that raspberry wine my aunt Licha left for me. It was a thoughtful gift and she was trying to ease my sense of loss, take away the pain a little, I suppose. I was in the mood for some of Edgar Allan Poe’s work but went to the store instead. This was going to be a night for should haves and I guess I knew that now: I should have stayed there, I should have ignored the phone, and I know that now. The last time I went out this late there were some unsavory types hanging around near the store, and I guess I was hoping I could avoid them this time. I wasn’t worried about seeing those guys out there as much as I was worried for them; they were kids after all. But then the kids of today were different than the kids of my age. These guys were more apt to pull out a gun or beat you way beyond senseless just to prove a point.

The other thing was I didn’t want any problems now that I was back in my old neighborhood, though I wasn’t yet sure that I was going to stay or even how long. As I looked around me I thought once more about how they closed the stores a lot earlier than I remembered them as a kid. It felt as though as soon as it became dark they pulled in the rug and went home, and for a second I wondered what they were afraid of and how they managed, how they stayed in business that way, but it was really cold and foggy that night too, so I was glad I didn’t go cheap when I got this wool coat. It was one of those dressy gray ones that look old till you touch it, but when you wear it you don’t care how it looks, you just know you aren’t going to be cold. I put on my leather gloves and the red scarf that was way too long, and though I tripped over it a few times it was my favorite. And on top of that I wore my watchman’s cap with the USC logo on the brim, pulled down low enough to keep my ears warm. I did go cheap on the shoes and was paying for it at times like this. Now I was feeling a sharp pain in my heels with every step as I walked along, probably because it was so cold and I bought them in the summer. They were brown and ugly with a hard sole that offered no cushion from the strong surface of the sidewalk with no give to it. But I liked them, they were a good fit, and thankfully they didn’t look as cheap as they cost.

Every step I took echoed in the emptiness of this neighborhood. I felt those echoes mocking my steps, my efforts to get past that street and over to the next block where the store was. I could see my breath in front of me as I walked and that alone was enough to make me feel cold and somewhat uncomfortable, but as I turned the last corner I was thinking that this neighborhood was never this bad, had this sense of despair and the feeling of being rundown as it felt now. Some of the old houses were getting really rundown and needed more than someone to slap a coat of paint on them to make them look better, and a lot of the yards were covered with weeds choking off the brown grass that died from lack of attention. I remembered mowing a lot of these lawns to make extra money as a kid, so it really bothered me. There are now a lot of For Sale signs and more than a few outright empty houses. And most of the windows were boarded up, and that alone gave it more of an empty feeling, but others with the glass broken out. So I guess it made sense, but as I walked past them they seemed to plead for someone to move in and make them a home again, take away the emptiness, and put someone there to give it life again.

If I didn’t know better, I would have thought those empty houses were afraid of something that might be moving in the area soon. Maybe the empty houses knew somehow that the end of this neighborhood was close and they were going to be razed for a new superhighway or yet another shopping mall where they combine twenty stores in a short block and expect you to go to every single one. Then I had the feeling that if I stopped and looked into the windows I might see ghosts of the families that lived there, and that if I looked closely enough they might still be trapped in there, awaiting someone to move in and release them. Would they let me go if I got that close? I wondered a little too loudly. I stopped then and looked far behind me and around both sides again, but I was alone on the street. It wasn’t that my place was that much to look at either, but it was good enough when I was growing up. And now with Mom and Dad both gone, presumably to heaven, didn’t I owe it to them to restore at least some of its luster and sell it? I mean, it wasn’t a home without them, but we shared some good times there; some good memories to carry with me as I lived out the rest of my life. It was a brick house that was painted brown for some reason. I guess red didn’t work for them and my dad wanted a brownstone, but it just didn’t look right to me.

I remember playing kick the can a few times right here on this corner and chasing the little blonde girl next door as we played, and having a crush on her. From where I was standing I could see the streetlight that marked where the safe zone was. There used to be trees on one side of the street making a perfect place to hide as we crept up on each other. They were weeping willows that gave us a perfect cover. My best friend at the time was a boy named Henry; he was six months older than I was and I thought he knew everything, especially about girls, whom he knew how to attract but not how to keep. He also moved away and I never heard from him again, though we promised not to let that happen. We tried writing and calling once in a while but we just faded apart until there were empty spaces when we talked, and then there was no more to talk about. I hadn’t thought about him in so many years. I could close my eyes and see the ghosts of us playing on that street, hear us laughing and shouting out to each other as we played, and I remember thinking that life could never be better than this. There were lots of hedges and brush to hide in on the other side of the street and we were worlds apart from the strife and war that the future held for us. We played a few other games too, but later on we discovered that it was a lot more fun when we were hiding in those bushes with some of the girls in the neighborhood—and some of them more than others.

I think that was when I fell in love with blondes, not just the little girl I knew then but all blondes. They seemed to have more bounce in their step, were quicker to smile, and seemed to know more about what fun was, or at least where to find it. Maybe it was that they just seemed more easy going than the others. Not in a cheap way, but an easygoing attitude, a fun outlook on life. Brunettes were so serious, and