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a latchkey story
A THURSDAY IN 1984
It happened the day he took the knife from the counter and grazed it against the kitchen sink. The sound pierced his ears, and he quickly put it down to go play with the children outside. The knife, being placed with the heaviest part of the handle hanging off the edge of the counter, fell to the floor. The noise failed to distract him as he ran out, and there the knife lay, out of place, just like everything else that day.
She entered, smiling at her little brother as he ran past her in the yard. He'd been at home, a latch key kid, before she even got off of the school bus. She was happy to see him and that he'd made it home safely from the long journey he had walking, not alone of course, but with his other friends from the school. As she walked inside, her smile faded as she dropped her book bag on the sofa, and what a grand sofa it was. Her mother had it ordered in with some money she'd won from playing Bingo with the girls every Thursday. Tonight was a Thursday night, and her mother wasn't expected to be home the same way it wasn't expected that her father be home. Unlike her mother, he was dead. He'd been dead for a long time.
The living room was a complete wreck, and it also wreaked of dirt, oils and food, obviously from the kitchen trashcan. Therefore, she walked into the kitchen, just like she did every single week, especially on Thursday, to begin cooking food and getting the place cleaned up, as if she was a parent, so that she and her little brother can have a decent night despite their missing mom. She would be back home soon, soon being Friday morning. It's quite alright because she and her brother are accustomed to it.
Missing the knife that had fallen onto the floor and landing at the corner of the counter, she walked toward the smelly trashcan, lifted the bag from it and took it outside to the backyard. There were weeds all over, and she realized that her mother forgot to put the dumpster out on Wednesday when she opened the dumpster to find it completely full.
"Mom," she sighed, but lugged the trash bag to her neighbor's house. Instead of knocking on the neighbor's door, she tapped the window because she could see him sitting inside watching television. He glanced toward the sound and smiled. That's when the girl yelled.
"Can I put my garbage in your dumpster? My mom forgot!"
He waved his hand and nodded, giving her permission to do as she needed. He also watched her from the window as she lifted the bag off of her shoulder and tossed it over into his dumpster which he hadn't moved from the street since the garbage collector took his trash yesterday. When she left his yard, he turned back to watching whatever he was watching before he was interrupted seconds ago.
The girl re-entered her home from the backdoor, went back into the kitchen and searched through the cabinet for a new trash bag.
"Yes!" she exclaimed, finding the last bag. From there, she lined the medium sized, silver trashcan with the white trashbag, checked on her little brother from the kitchen window, and then walked back by the counter where the knife had fallen to the floor. The knife was no longer there.
––––––––
"Move, Josh! It's my turn."
"No, let me. I can do it. Then it's your turn," replied Josh who was desperately hungry, trying to wait on his older sister to make something to eat so that he could fill his stomach. He jumped atop the skateboard and took off slowly down the bumpy sidewalk. "I'm doing it! I'm doing it!" he shouted with glee until he led the skateboard directly into an uneven lift in the sidewalk which caused him to plummet to the hard concrete, scarring the palms of his hands and injuring his ego.
The boys in the background who witnessed the entire fall, laughed their hardest and pointed at him as he sat there in pain, more in his heart than anywhere else. As he sat, he looked away from his taunting friends to a small, gray car that sat at the very end of the long road, the same road that he walked on the way home. He thought that same car had passed him and his friends on the way home. It was a car that he'd never seen before on his road, so it stood out to him because there was never a car sitting at the end of the road like that before.
"Hey, did it hurt?"
"Get your hand off of my head!" Josh yelled back, swiping at his taunting friend as his attention abandoned the sitting car. "No, it didn't," he lied. "It wasn't my fault. There's a crack in the sidewalk.”
"Yeah right."
"It is. See it." He stood up and pointed, but the boys acted like they couldn't see it, leaving Josh there to question his own ability to ride a skateboard. At the same time, he continued wondering when his sister would call him inside like she normally does to eat a sandwich or something else that she'd made for him. He turned toward his house and then back to his friends, but then decided to stay outside a bit longer to play even though he knew it was odd that he not hear from his big sister. He wasn't outside for five minutes longer when he heard screaming.
"What's that?"
All five of the boys stopped playing and listened to what Josh knew as his sister screaming for help. He ran to the front door and twisted the knob as the other boys stood on the sidewalk in terror, watching the blinds from a front window at the other end of the house, a bedroom window, shaking violently. One of the boys sprinted home, terribly afraid of whatever was happening at the house, even leaving his book bag on the sidewalk while the others stood there watching their friend bang on the front door in tears, afraid for his sister. Finally, one of the boys, the older of them all by two years, ran to the front door with him while the other two stood there in shock as the screams stopped and the blinds stopped moving.
“Open the door, Katy! I don’t have my key, so open the door. I left it inside. I’m locked out!” Josh yelled shaking the lock as hard as his young hands could shake it while the older boy kicked at the door as if he was strong enough to break it. Finally, he gave up.
“Look for a rock. Look for a rock, you guys!” the older boy yelled as they search the fresh grass for something hard. “We need to bust the window open. Wait, who got books inside their bags? I got some in mine, so here.” He didn’t wait for the younger boys to respond. Instead, he snatched their bags and dumped them out. Then, whatever he could find to shove into his book bag, he did before running to the window. Josh followed behind in tears, not understanding why his sister wouldn’t open the door.
Josh watched as the older boy swung and hit the window as hard as he could hit it. The window shook, but it didn’t break. The older boy hit the window again and again, however, it only resulted in the screen falling to the ground. Right after the screen fell, Josh began screaming for his sister again, but she didn’t respond. As he turned around to run back to the front door, he noticed a man walking from the back of his neighbor’s house. It was the same man who he saw in the small, gray car that he thought passed him on the road as he was walking home from school.
“Mister! Mister!” he shouted, but the man continued walking down the road toward his car. Therefore, Josh looked back at his neighbor’s house, getting the idea to run over and ask for help. That was what he did. After he ran across his neighbor’s yard, he approached the front door in ruins of runny tears. His neighbor, having seen him already crossing the yard appearing horrified, met him at the door.
“What’s wrong, son?” he asked, stepping outside with bare feet and a balled up newspaper in his hand. “Tell me,” he stated as he dropped the paper to the ground in an area where ants had already taken over.
“I can’t get in my house.”
The old man smiled. “Well, that ain’t no reason to cry there, Josh. Come on here. I just seen your sister. She can’t get in there either?” he asked, already walking toward Josh’s home.
“No, she’s in there,” Josh answered as he looked down the road at the man he saw come from behind his neighbor’s yard get into the small, gray car and drive away quickly. “She was hollering and screaming, but she wouldn’t come to the front door to let me in.”
The old man stopped. “Hollering and screaming?” he asked confused but on higher alert when he spotted the other boys banging on the bedroom window. “Come on here, son. Stay with me. Let’s check ‘round back here.”
The two went to the back of Josh’s house where they found the screen door open, and just before Josh ran inside, the old man grabbed him hard by the arm. “I said stay with me.”
“She was in there screamin’, Mr. Cloggsdale, and now she’s not. She’s in there hurt. I know it.”
“Don’t get all worked up. You know how to get in contact with your ma?”
“No sir. Bingo is today. That’s all she tells us. She’s going to Bingo.”
“Bingo, huh?” He shook his head and walked inside. “Katy? Katy? It’s Mr. Cloggsdale from next door. I got Josh here with me. Got him by the hand. He looks mighty fearful that something has done happened to you. You in here? You alright?”
“Her bedroom is the one all the way down there, on this side,” he stated, pointing to the left.
The old man forced Josh to a stop while he continued the rest of the way down the hallway. There was no sound that the old man could hear except the boys on the outside of the house banging against the window. As he reached the bedroom, he didn’t go any further. There was blood at the doorway along with a portion of Katy’s hand in full view. When he looked down, he became aware that both he and little Josh were standing directly on fading bloody footprints leading to the outside of the house from the back door.
“What’s wrong with my sister, Mr. Cloggsdale?” the little boy asked, standing all alone at the end of the hallway.
––––––––
LAST THURSDAY
“You know how it is, so don’t act like you don’t. I feel like this, if he can run off and die for a lifetime and leave me with the kids, then I can at least run off for a full twenty-four hours and have my fun. Don’t try to make me feel guilty about living my life after he died with his girlfriend by his side while leaving us with nothing but bad memories. He dumped this in my lap without asking how I even felt.”
“No one’s trying to make you feel guilty, but your son is only six...”
“He’s seven. Seven years old and capable of letting himself inside the house after school. Besides that, his sister comes home right after him, and in case you forgot, she’s a teenager.”
“I didn’t forget. How could I ever? Ninth grade...but still.”
“Yeah...” she interjected. “Ninth.”
“And what am I missing over here, beautiful ladies?” a man interrupted.
“Well, I was just telling Lindsay here...again...that she should think twice about leaving her children alone.”
“They’re not alone,” she stressed. “They have each other. Plus, I’m only gone once a week. Stop judging me, will you? Plus,” she continued, turning her attention to the male who stood next to her friend. “You just met her like what, two days ago? Be careful who you fall in love with, James. She’ll be telling you about yourself in a minute.”
He smiled. “So you have two children?”
Lindsay cautiously answered while letting out her cigarette. “Yeah, two. But enough about my children. I’m still off the clock,” she winked referring to her self-serving vacation away from home. “Got about an hour left.”
“Well, we do have to get back now, so come on. Let’s go,” the man replied to her wink while he took his girlfriend by the hand. “I’ll have you back in no time, and when that car of yours gets fixed like new.”
“Thanks,” Lindsay interjected. “Janet will let me know. Thanks a million though for looking out for me like that. He must be a good friend.”
“He is a good friend. The mechanic over there on your car is my brother, and that’s as good a friend I can get. Got you a great deal on it. Anything helps, right?” the man smiled, willing to be helpful and make a great impression in front of his girlfriend’s best friend. “Don’t worry about a thing. I’ll take you home. I can even drop the car off when it’s done...me and Janet.”
She looked at her friend sideways but appreciative that she’d found a man that was good for something useful since her car had just broken down. Times had been difficult for her for a while, and it suddenly became refreshing to have a man care enough. Already having known for a while that she wasn’t the most attractive due to a burn she ended up with across her neck from a grease accident on the stove, she’d hardly had a man see any beauty that she’d ever had since. She even blamed the horrible scar on the reason her deceased husband cheated on her although it wasn’t true because he’d been having affairs before the grease popped. As far as how Lindsay felt about herself, she didn’t. She was only trying to grasp at a life she felt she was quickly losing.
“That’ll work. Well, I suppose I do need to get back.”
“Yeah, you do. Bingo doesn’t last that long,” her girlfriend added.
“To them, it lasts all night, and what they don’t know won’t hurt them in the least.”
They left the empty lot to head back home in a small, gray car that was owned by Janet’s new boyfriend, James. The drive home was a bumpy one, filled with stops, laughter, food, beer and cigarettes. When James finally pulled up to her home, all of the lights were out in the house except for the light from the bedroom down the hall.
“Looks like she’s up. No sneaking in tonight,” Linsday sighed.
“Like I said, they need their mom home every night, not six nights out of the week. I ignored it in the beginning because you were stressed out for some time, but you really have to stop this, Lindsay.”
“Bye.” Lindsay exited the small, gray car and peeped back in at James. “Thanks for the lift, James. It won’t happen again, you having to bring me back home. I promise.”
“If it ever does, I know how to get you back home. Take care.” His eyes diverted from her to what he’d heard was her teenage daughter’s bedroom. As he watched Lindsay open the door before he pulled off from in front of the house, he placed his hand on his girlfriend’s leg. “Every Thursday, huh?”
“Like clockwork.” She shook her head and leaned her head against his shoulder as he drove away.
~~
“Yes, officer, sir. I went in.”
“Sir, why did you enter the home?”
The frustrated old man replied, “I went inside the home because little Josh there was afraid, sir. He was scared, just like he is now. I held his hand the whole time... until I got to the room where he said was her bedroom. That’s all officer.”
“And if I ask the boy, he’ll tell me the same story.”
“Ask him. Go ahead. I’m the one who called you, officer. Look at me,” he raised his arms. “I can’t do much of anything like I seen in there. Look at my arm, man. I can barely lift it. I told you. She was all cut up, just cut up,” he continued, disturbed at the line of questioning but more so about the teenage girl who had been his neighbor for so long.
“Did you see anyone in the area?”
“No sir. I’d just seen her, officer. She brought her trash over here. Right here while the boys were out playing. She came to my window and asked me if she could sit it in there. I told her yes. Next thing, I hear Josh at my door crying, and that’s when I ended up finding her dead.”
“You say she used your dumpster. Why?”
“How should I know? The trash man just came yesterday, but her mom could have forgotten to put it out. She does that sometimes.”
“Do you have any idea where her mother may be?”
“I surely don’t know,” the older man replied, not wanting to elaborate on the woman’s business.
“Well, we need you at the station as soon as you can get there for a written statement.”
“I can go now if you guarantee me a ride. I can’t drive. Lost my license.”
“Sure can. Let me take care of that for you. Do whatever you need to do to get ready, and the ride will be waiting, sir.”
From far off, after the older man went back inside his house to put on decent attire, a woman jumped from a car located down the road, running as fast as she could toward her home, screaming so loudly that even the officers noticed that she must have been the mother of the distraught little boy and deceased teenage girl. The car she exited was still down the road with the driver’s door open. It was her car, still broken, but in enough shape to get her back home. The problem with the car this time was her. She didn’t fill the gas tank, so she ran out of gas.
“Katy! Josh!” she screamed as she barreled down the asphalt barefoot. The boy who ran home during the incident told his mother what was going on at Josh’s house, and she just happened to know a friend who could contact Josh’s mother. This was how she got the news of the police being at her home for a disturbance, however, she had no idea that Katy was dead.
She reached her yard, and the first person to run toward her was Josh whom she hugged so tightly. Then, she stood up awaiting her daughter’s arms but when she didn’t see Katy, she rushed to the officers who were already approaching her.
“Where is she? Katy. Where’s my daughter?”
“Ma’am, your daughter has been attacked.”
“Attacked? What?”
“Ma’am, she’s deceased.”
“Bring me my baby! Katy!” she fought, but ended up on the ground in pain after she wrestled against the officers to get into the house. Her son started crying hysterically once again at what appeared to be the officers hurting his mother. When she saw him breaking down, she stopped fighting against the officers and took him back into her arms, barely breathing while frantically searching for answers as to what happened to her oldest child.
“Ma’am, she was stabbed to death inside the home with a kitchen knife. We still don’t know what fully happened, but we have questioned the next door neighbor...”
“Mr. Cloggsdale...he killed my baby girl?” She glanced over at his house, and just as she looked, he stepped from the porch with an officer guiding him away from the scene. “Mr. Cloggsdale!” she screamed violently, and he sadly turned to see her squeezing her son tightly.
“Ma’am, he didn’t kill your daughter,” the officer quickly interjected.
“What? Well who did...you just said his name? You said...”
“Mama, Mr. Cloggsdale found her. I went and got him, Mama, because I heard her screaming in the house. We saw the blood, and he brought me back outside the house and went to call the police officers.”
As he spoke, the parents of the other children arrived in their cars, some walking onto the scene asking for the release of their children as they were desperately worried. When the officers released them, the parents dropped to their knees and embraced them tightly as the mother of the deceased teenage girl looked on, still confused as to everything going on around her. She finally stood up.
“I want to see my child.”
“Ma’am, we are taking pictures of the scene right now, and we will allow you to enter the home soon.”
“That’s my home. That’s my daughter!”
“Ms. Lindsay, I’m sorry I couldn’t save her. I didn’t see anything or anybody. I’m so sorry, baby. So sorry. I would have given my life.” As Mr. Cloggsdale spoke, she ran over to him and fell against his chest, and as she hugged him tightly, he wept and rubbed the back of her hair. “It’s not a thing you want to see. Wait until they clean her up, muffin. Just wait.”
“I’m sorry...when they said your name,” I thought.
“No, no...I know,” he responded in wisdom, understanding her pain. “Little Josh there did all he could, too.” Then, he whispered in her ear. “I tell you though. Somebody musta’ been in that house. Had to be. I saw her when she came home, and she was fine. Next five to ten minutes, she was gone. She looked regular.” Then, his tone lowered, and his face turned as solid as stone. “They gonna question you about where you were.”
She snatched her head back and removed his hand from the back of her head. Terrified at his words, she continued to back away, allowing him to enter the patrol car. Then, he realized she’d become afraid of what he might say to the officers, so he shrugged his shoulders to signal that he wasn’t going to say a word. He wouldn’t have been lying. Bingo was all he and everyone else knew based off of what she said. Just Bingo. As she stood there looking at him as if she’d seen a ghost that would haunt her for the rest of her life, she watched his eyes move quickly behind her. She turned around to see a body, covered up in something dark, like a plastic bag, and she ran over to it immediately along with her son.
“Give me my daughter! Give her to me!”
“Step aside, everyone. Give her room. Hold still and just give her some room.” The officer waved away the emergency personnel and his comrades as Lindsay placed her hand slowly onto the sheet that covered daughter’s face. She then removed it.
“Oh God! Oh my beautiful daughter!”
The girl’s face was clean and perfect, as if she was asleep. There was no evidence of a struggle judging by the appearance of the teenager’s face. Taking her son by the hand, she placed his hand on her cheek while she kissed them both at the same time, and when her son removed his hand, she became removed from her adoring trance to come to grips with the reality that lay beneath the covering. She reached to unzip the bag and was stopped.
“Ma’am. Not here.”
It had never been so hard for her to choke back her emotions, and it was evident that the struggle was too much for her to bear. There was a cloak of guilt spreading across her heart, and it was then that she stared into the eyes of her little boy and wanted to die.
“Ms. Lindsay Rose? I’m the lead detective on this case. I need to get all the information that I can get from your son. I know this is a difficult time, but the sooner I speak with him, the better. Please,” he requested, lifting his arm to guide them to the chairs that are located on the front porch. They all sat down and spoke.
“Josh, tell me what happened. I want you to tell me what happened on the way from school, when you came in the house...just everything from the time you left school. Do you see this tape recorder?” he asked as the boy nodded his head yes. “I’m recording this so that I can figure out if we are missing something that you can clue us in on. Is that okay? That way, maybe we can find out who did this to your sister.”
“Okay.”
“Good.” He hit the record button on the tape recorder while Lindsay watched it and listened to her son’s every word.
“I was coming home, like I do all the time. I was with my friends after I got home, too. I walk down this same street. Before I get to this street, I walk down the other street, the street that the school is on. Both streets are long. When I got home, I opened the front door with my key. My friends were outside waiting like they do all the time, so I dropped everything, ran into the kitchen for a drink from the faucet, and went outside. I know I’m not supposed to.” He put his head down as he spoke, aware that his mom would be unhappy that he didn’t stay in the house. “I went outside, though, and my sister was already in the yard. I ran right by her because she gets home right after I do. Then I started skateboarding with my friends. I fell down, and then I heard my sister screaming. I ran to the door, but for some reason, she’d locked me out of the house. She never does that. Then, my friends ran to her bedroom window and started hitting it with book bags, trying to get in. Wait, they also helped me try to get in the front door. Then, that’s when I saw a man walking from behind Mr. Cloggsdale’s house after my sister stopped screaming. I tried to get him to help, but he kept walking, so I got Mr. Cloggsdale from his house. He took me around the back of the house because the front was locked, and the back door was open. We went in, and he found Katy in there. She was hurt bad. He didn’t let me see her, but I saw some anyway.”
“Go back to the man, Josh...the man that you saw coming from the back of Mr. Cloggsdale’s house. Have you seen him before?”
“No. Never saw him before.”
“What did he look like?”
“He was a white man with dark hair, in spikes. He was taller than you but skinny like my mom. I saw him pass by me when I was walking home, too.”
“You did?”
“Yes sir. He was driving.”
“Do you remember what the car looked like?”
“It was a small, gray car.”
His mother’s eyes moved rapidly from staring endlessly at the tape recorder toward the moving lips of her son. Everything fell silent to her ears after the description of the car was revealed. She jumped up from her seat at the porch in the middle of the interview and ran into the house to her telephone. The detective shut the interview down momentarily as he believed something the boy said caused the disturbance from his mother. He followed her quietly inside.
“Answer!” she yelled into the phone, waiting for her friend to pick up.
“Hello?”
“Where is James?”
“How the hell should I know? I thought you already had your car back.”
“Where is he, Janet?”
“What is wrong, Lindsay? I don’t know. What’s the matter? Is the car still messed up or worse than before?”
“What’s his full name?”
“James Jordan, why?” she asked, growing uneasy at the sound of Lindsay’s voice.
She slammed the phone down in her friend’s face. Right after that, the phone rang and continued to ring as she stared the officer back in the face, broken and riddled with fault as she stated the killer’s name.
“It was James Jordan. A fuckin’ man named James Jordan. He came in here and killed my daughter!” she screamed, shoving the dried dishes from the counter onto the floor and throwing the kitchen chair against the wall, but before she could attack anything else, the detective squeezed her arms tightly.
“How do you know?”
“Because my son! Because my son described him. I’ve been inside that car! He knew she was home,” she wailed. “He knew...he knew, he knew! He knew she was home alone! He knew I wasn’t here!”
As she spoke, the phone continued to ring, but no one answered. The detective had already recognized the name of the man she called James Jordan. He was a sexual predator, just released only thirty days from the day Lindsay’s son dragged and dropped the knife, that was used to kill his sister, to the kitchen floor.
––––––––
“Baby, let me inside.”
She walked to the door of her trailer, and in walks the man of her dreams with the smile she fell in love with from the moment she laid eyes on him.
“Of course I’ll let you in. It’s about time you showed up. I’ve been calling you.”
“Yeah, I left the shop early. I figured I would miss you. What...what uh...what’s going on? Hey, but first, give me a kiss.”
“James, what’s that in your hair?” she asked, kissing him on the lips while squeezing his black hair in between her fingertips. She moved her head back from his to see the smeary red on her skin. “Is this some sort of oil or something from the shop?”
“Lemme see.” He examined her fingertips. “Yeah it is. Lemme go take a shower, baby, and how about you come join me. I have to wash all this...”
“It looks like blood, James. Are you cut?”
“No, no, baby,” he expressed with a huge smile. “Don’t worry about me any. Have you heard from your friend though...uh...”
“Lindsay?”
“Yeah, her.” Removing his shirt, he walked toward the bathroom. “You coming?”
“No, silly. I’m cooking. I need to take the cake out of the oven in ten minutes flat. You know I told you that we’re surprising her daughter Katy with a birthday cake tomorrow night. You should come.”
“Nah, that’s girl stuff. She coming over?”
“You know she just called me not too long ago. She asked about you, and she didn’t even stay on the phone. When I called back, she didn’t pick up at all.”
He walked back into the room naked. “What did she ask about me for?”
“Who knows? She hung up after I told her your last name.”
“The hell did you do that for?”
“What, James?” she questioned him as he bolted back to the front of the home, headed to the window unhindered by his nakedness. “Don’t tell me your brother didn’t fix her car at all and you know about it? How could you do that? Are you serious? That’s my friend. No wonder she sounded so upset.”
“Hell with your friend.” He moved from the window, rushed back to the bathroom, and started to get dressed again. As she listened to him sliding his clothing back on, she spoke again.
“Uhh...your shower? You’re not taking one after all? What’s going on?” she asked frustrated as she watched him walk past her and into her kitchen, open the drawer, and march back her way with a knife in his hand. “James!”
He grabbed her by her hair and jerked her head backwards as she screamed in a fit of confusion and fear as the knife came across her throat while he shoved her forward, headed towards the windows at the front of the trailer. The road was empty, but he continued to look, feeling positive that the whole reason for Lindsay asking about his full name was because she found out somehow that it was him that killed her daughter.
“You never should have done that, Janet. Never should have done it. Sit down!” He dragged her terrified and desperate body down into a chair that he pulled next to the window. Then he pushed the sofa up against the front door to make certain she couldn’t get away fast. “Don’t worry, if you don’t give me any trouble, baby, I won’t give you any.” The same smile she’d seen as warm and all too handsome became a menace, an evil that she no longer admired as he spoke. Nothing about it made her feel at ease as it usually did. “I’ve never hurt you before have I?”
“James, let me go. Whatever it is you think I know, I don’t. She just asked for your name, I swear...”
“The police are coming. Anytime someone asks too many questions about me, the police come. Looks like this time though, they have a good reason. You tell her I was coming over here?”
“No. She hung up the phone. James, please, let me go.”
“Listen. Shut up and listen. You hear that?” He leaped his shirtless body over the loveseat and planted his ear against the trailer’s wall. “Yeah, that’s them alright. If you didn’t live out here in nowhere land I might have had somewhere to run.”
“The woods are right there!” she screamed, hoping he would bolt.
“Canines, Janet, canines. Get your head right. They’ll get me quicker than if I stay in here. You got to lie for me. There is no warrant, Janet. Just lie. Say I ran off.”
“What? For what? What are you running for?” she stressed, scared for her own life as he oddly spoke to her kindly but held the knife like he could cut her just as easily. Perplexed at what to do and what to say, she attempted to behave as rationally as she could under the conditions that she’d become aware that the cops were coming to get him and to rescue her.
He fell to his knees in front of her and began rubbing her left thigh with his right hand as the knife’s handle scrubbed against her leg, still firmly within his grasp. A second later, he gave her a kiss, leaving her disgusted that he would even think to place his mouth onto hers after having her threatened with a knife. Sweat poured from his forehead, and his body odor became none too welcoming. “I killed her.”
“What?” Slamming her back against the chair but with nowhere to go, she couldn’t take her eyes off of him, how he shakily grinned, like a small child attempting to cover up his wrongdoing with a light-hearted answer. The problem with his answer was that there was nothing light-hearted about the word or action kill. James was out of his mind. She watched him continue to smile as he sat on the floor in front of her until he heard the sirens come across the front yard. For some reason, she couldn’t separate the man whom she originally met from the man who was, at that point, rushing around the house claiming to have killed someone. Finally, she snapped out of her bewildering gaze of him and asked, “Who did you kill?”
He stopped pacing while sliding on his shirt, and she glanced down at her fingers which still were stained with what she thought was a strange car oil. Shaking, she threw her attention back to him, the man who now stood hovering directly over her, both his hands locking her in as he leaned heavily on the arms of the chair.
“Katy. I killed Katy.” Ominously glaring at her as the chair began to shake beneath the force of his strength holding it down, at his confession, she began to beat on his chest and kick like a mad woman. She didn’t care if she lived or died with each strike against his body because she wanted to kill him. She wanted to kill him so badly that she fell deaf to her own screams. There was no more love left, infatuation completely gone, because her dear friend’s daughter had been murdered by the man that she let in their lives.
Her screams echoed loudly, so loudly that the officers in the yard drew their weapons and hid behind their squad car doors. He heard his name being called from outside as it was obvious that the officers had identified his car which sat there beside Janet’s in the yard.
“Shutup, Janet. I couldn’t help it. I’m a good guy, you know. I got this problem though, and uh... It was fast. I just couldn’t stop myself.”
“You killed her!”
“Shut up, I said!” he finally shouted, while the smile that she’d come to both love and hate, disappeared underneath a face and heart of stone. Her confusion was completely gone because the face finally matched the man who stood before her as he created a bloody nose by silencing her with a punch. Then, he unsealed the front door by moving the sofa away.
“Hey! Hey, bad boys, you found me,” he yelled in a rage as if someone had done something horrible to him, created an injustice in his life, or taken the life of someone he loved. “Just like you wanted. Come and get me,” he yelled through the cracked front door. “I have her in here, you know. I didn’t do anything, not one thing at all. As a matter of fact, she’s free to go. Whatever you want from me...I’m gonna sue you! I’m gonna have all your badges. Janet!”
She ran. She ran toward the back of trailer and didn’t look back. There were no footsteps behind her, and the only thing she felt was guilt as she placed her foot out the back door, hollering all the way through the tall grass and weeds that surrounded her brick bottomed home. With outstretched arms, she waved the officers down who continued to aim at her until she was pulled safely to cover.
“Get him out of there. He said he killed Katy. He told me that! He killed my friend’s daughter!” When they don’t move fast enough, she continues, “Get him out of my house. It’s gonna burn down! My oven. It’s on. Go get him out! She’s dead,” she sobbed not understanding why they aren’t moving.
“Ma’am, remain calm. Is there anyone left inside your home, anyone at all besides James Jordan?”
“No. It was just me, and he hit me,” she stated, pointing to the blood on her nose and shirt. “He pulled my own kitchen knife on me. I swear, I didn’t know who he was or what he’d done.”
“We’re aware. Does he have any guns that you know of on him or inside your home?”
“No...I hate guns.”
“Good. Now go. Take her to the back! Get her off the property now!” The officer turns to his men and motions them forward. They move toward the small porch and then burst inside the front door within minutes to find the murderer of the teen girl with his own throat slit, dying on the living room floor. An officer ran to turn the smoking oven off while other officers ended up saving the man’s life so that he faced charges for murder. Janet later found out that the man she was dating had been incarcerated for rape when he was twenty-two years old. Lindsay and Janet no longer remained friends.
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WHEN KATY LIVED
“Who, me?” she asked, feeling awkward due to the amount of eyes that stared at her on the bus awaiting her answer.
“Yeah, what’s your favorite meal?”
“I mean,” she shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Pizza I guess.” Her mom didn’t cook much. All the meals were mainly ordered in or she cooked for herself and her brother, and the cooked meals were almost always baked beans, hot dogs and rice or burritos no matter who was cooking.
The girl stood up against bus rules and regulations, excited about something that she’d obviously just thought up. “I have an idea. How about we all get together at my house this weekend? My mom already said that whatever weekend I want I can have at the most three to four girls over, not guys...” she stressed, rolling her eyes at the fellows on the school bus while Katy’s eyes lit up. She was ecstatic. Getting away to be with friends was something she needed. Besides, she had no idea if her mom was even going to remember that her birthday was tomorrow, much less if she was going to celebrate.
“I’m in,” Katy stated while grabbing her book bag to exit the bus. “See you tomorrow.”
“Okay. See ya, Katy.” Then, she mouthed, “Call me.”
The bus began to move forward as she gave the girl on the bus the thumbs up. She, then, walked slowly until the bus turned the corner and was out of sight. Then, she picked up the pace, ready to ensure her little brother’s safety inside the house since he ceremoniously arrived home before her. On Thursdays, she’d learned to hustle even harder to get there in order to feel the relief of his safety.
There were his friends outside on the sidewalk which triggered her relief because it became obvious that they were waiting on him to come back outside. The closer she got to the yard, the boys started to wave, and she smiled back. Her brother ran outside as she crossed the yard, not even speaking in his excitement to get outdoors and skateboard. Katy laughed and walked inside the home to a mess. It was a normal thing, so she dropped her bags and headed for the kitchen to take out the trash, however, when she got outside, she noticed that the dumpster was full.
Therefore, feeling like she shouldn’t have to pick up the slack from her mother but not verbally complaining too much about it, she walked over to her neighbor’s house to request the usage of his dumpster. When she got there, she saw him sitting, watching television, as she stared through his window.
She shouted, "Can I put my garbage in your dumpster? My mom forgot!"
He waved his hand with an approving smile, and she left the window, feeling satisfied that at least she had a neighbor that looked out for her more than her own mother sometimes. He didn’t mind them going over to his house at all, even to eat, whenever her mother wasn’t around. He was like a father many times, leaving his door open for them whenever necessary.
She placed the garbage in the dumpster and then headed back to her home. As she walked in, she failed to lock the screen door behind her, something she’d grown lax at doing over the last months. It would just slip her mind due to the increasing comfort she began to feel with the schedule. Finally, she found a new trash bag, secured it in the trashcan, and then went to change out of her school clothing.
As she walked toward her dresser which is adjacent to the bedroom window, she heard a sound, like the front door’s bolt being locked, however, she shrugged it off as she peeped out of the blinds and saw that the boys were still out front, including her brother. However, when she turned around, a man stood at the entrance of her bedroom while she stood her position, uncovered due to half of her clothing already being off. He began to smile as if he was there innocently, but that soon changed as he stormed toward her horrified body. With nowhere to go, she fought him as hard as she could, while her body slammed against the window. She didn’t win the fight. He’d struck her in the stomach multiple times, not with his fist, but with a knife, until the fighting stopped and blood poured from her abdomen.
That was the end of the innocent, teenage girl named Katy Rose as her younger brother cried and knocked furiously at the front door for his big sister whom he loved so much. He tried to get help from a man he saw walking down the road, but the man never stopped for his call. He just kept on walking.
The question now remained who was to take care of him on Thursdays? Besides, after all the tears and heartache of Katy Rose’s murder passed, his mother continued to leave the home each week for twenty-four hour Bingo while he slept in his bed at night frightened to death that the same end would come to him at any moment.
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THE END
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