That fella over there? Well, that’s Jack Terrington. Quite the stand-up guy really: a devoted father to two beautiful children, John and Sarah, and loving husband to his wonderful wife Ellaine. John just finished the 5th grade. Can you believe it? Time really flies when you have kids. To celebrate, Jack is taking him on a camping trip next weekend to Harpers Ferry. Nothing like sleeping under the stars and waking up at the crack of dawn to head down to the lake and try your luck at catching lunch for the day. A boy has to learn how to fish and survive the outdoors you know. Everything was going perfectly in Jack Terrington’s world. Well, in any case, it would have been if any of that was true.
In fact, Jack Terrington wasn’t even his real name. His name was Rob Beaverman. He and his wife had recently gone through a separation after he’d found her cheating on him with his secretary, Hellen. Ha! What a turn around. No one saw that one coming I tell yah. Especially not Rob. Of course, none of this mattered to Allen Zimmerman. He had never met Rob, and for that matter, never intended to. He much preferred his own creation of Rob’s life as Jack Terrington, the all American white bread father of two, living the American dream with his gorgeous wife at his side. That was a story you could really sink your teeth into.
CRUNCH!
Allen took a bite of his apple. Red delicious of course. He didn’t have time for that granny smith bullshit. No sir. Too sour and left you with a funny tingling that started in the front of your teeth and ended just at the base of your spine. To Allen Zimmerman, Rob Beaverman was a granny smith apple. He wanted no part of him and had no need to know he existed. Reality always left him with a sour taste in his mouth that he could never seem to wash away. Jack Terrington? Now there was your red delicious. Crisp, clean, and no sour after taste.
Shaking himself from his reverie, Allen scanned his surroundings to see if any more of his favorite characters were passing through today. People watching was one of Allen’s biggest hobbies. He found it particularly fascinating the stories you could weave just by glimpsing a person doing a totally mundane action. Allen even felt himself grow close to some of the characters he’d seen pass by on a more frequent basis, like Jack Terrington. Close, sure, but from a distance. That was the safest way to do things. Personal relationships had always eluded Allen, but he had become even more estranged to them after losing his parents.
Joyce and Richard Zimmerman had met in their sophomore year of high school and fell immediately into an infatuation with each other that you can only get as budding adolescents with an aching set of loins ready to make their mark on the world. They stayed together through their remaining two years of high school only to be unceremoniously separated when Joyce accepted an out of state scholarship to Penn State and Richard stayed behind to attend the University of Maryland. They both swore to maintaining a long distance relationship through college, but let’s face it folks, those situations rarely work. And Joyce and Richard were no exception. Joyce cheated here, Richard there, and eventually they just fizzled out in a somewhat amicable break up.
Some 10 years later, a 29 year old Richard was out at a local watering hole in Fells Point with his buddies when who should wander in but Joyce. The two barely missed a beat and seemed to fall right back where they left off before college. Six months later Joyce was pregnant. When she decided to keep it, Richard proposed. Nine months later the two were married with a bright, young baby boy; Allen Zimmerman.
The pair did their best to be good parents to Allen. Well, Joyce had done her best. Richard had quite a difficult time accepting that the late night bar scene was becoming a thing of his past. Just over a year ago, he was out drinking with his friends and answering the occasional late night booty call. Now the only booty calls he was answering were those of a screaming baby at four in the morning to clean the shit out of its diaper. Ain’t that a bitch Rich! You got yourself deep in baby shit now! At 31 years old Richard Zimmerman was not ready for this.
The years pressed on though and the family of three ambled along. Although, from Richard’s persective, you may call it a family of four; Allen, Joyce, Richard, and Richard’s nearest and dearest friend, Jack Daniels.
It was a warm afternoon on June 19, 1997. A 10 year old Allen Zimmerman sat in the parking lot of Parkton Elementary school awaiting his mother’s green Honda Accord to roll up. The last day of school before summer break always had kids buzzing and today was no different. The bell had rung and kids were moving about in an unbridled frenzy, anxious to be free of the confines of the public education system. Allen’s mother had promised to take him out for a special treat when she picked him up, and so, he sat outside looking patient, but the anticipation danced in his head like a caged dog seeing his human return home to offer deliverance from his confinement. That anticipation turned to confusion when his father’s black Lincoln Continental rolled into the parking lot instead of his mother’s Honda.
Richard Zimmerman stepped out of the car and gazed at Allen with a vapid expression that made his stomach feel as though it had turned over inside him. He waved Allen to come over and Allen, on legs that felt as if they’d turned to lead, obeyed. Richard sat Allen down in the passenger seat, buckled him in, closed the door, and skirted around the back of the car to the driver’s side. He had the key in the ignition when Allen asked “where’s mom?”
Richard let out a deep, hissing sigh. “Allen, your mother was in a very bad car accident a couple of hours ago. She’s…She um… She passed away Allen. Joyce…I…” Richard’s voice trailed off and his head collapsed on the steering wheel. For the first, and only time in his life, he cried in front of his son.
Allen sank back in his seat unable to breath, unable to speak. His mother couldn’t be dead. His head was spinning and his heart was racing. Allen was lost in a whirl of emotion that left him staring blankly and silently out the window on the drive home. If there was ever a time for Richard Zimmerman to reach out to his son, this was it. Instead, the two drew even further apart from each other.
Allen continued school but progressively withdrew from peer interactions when they could be avoided. Richard continued to work but spent his evenings polishing off the better portion of a fifth of Jack Daniels while mindlessly watching ESPN. Allen learned not to be around his father when he was drinking (which was every night now). One night, Allen had snuck downstairs looking for a snack, only to find his father pacing around the kitchen in a drunken stupor. One noisy stair gave away Allen’s position to Richard.
“What the fuck are you looking at you stupid little shit! Get the fuck out of here!” Richard grabbed a tire iron which, for an unknown reason happened to be resting on the kitchen island, and hurled it at Allen’s head nearly missing him and blasting a hole in the wall. Allen fled in absolute terror and locked himself in his room. From that point on, he spent most of his time confined in his room losing himself in books. This continued over the next eight years until Allen came home from school on his 18th birthday.
His father’s car was in the driveway. Home early from work? Not likely. He probably never made it in today. Last night had been a heavier night of drinking than usual for Richard Zimmerman. Allen had locked himself in his room listening to his father tear apart the living room until he finally wore himself out around two in the morning and passed out. Allen had made a point to leave early that morning before his father awoke from what was sure to be one hell of a hangover. With a weary resignation Allen pushed through the front door unsure what kind of mood he was about to find his father in.
He couldn’t hear the television playing in the other room, which was unusual. That was, after all, Richard’s go to source of mind numbing entertainment. Instead, Allen walked in on Elton John’s sweet, melancholy voice cutting through the first verse of “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me”. “Too late to save myself from falling. I took a chance…” Elton crooned from the living room.
The unfamiliar atmosphere beckoned Allen through the kitchen and around the corner to the living room where the stereo was playing. His father sat there in his favorite recliner staring blankly at Allen, a finished bottle of Jack on the floor lying blithely beside a .357. What was left of the side of Richard Zimmerman’s head now decorated his prized 50 inch zenith on the far wall. The piano keys struck hard and Elton wailed “But losing everything, is like the sun going down on me”.
Richard must have had ol’ Elton on repeat because the song played through several times before Allen shook his gaze free from the gravitational pull of his father’s now lifeless posterior. He walked back into the kitchen and picked up the phone meaning to dial 911 but hung up before hitting the final “1”. He grabbed an apple from the basket on counter and sat down at the kitchen table. Before calling the police, Allen Zimmerman had a snack.
Allen sat on his favorite park bench reminiscing on the 10 years that had gone by since Richard Zimmerman had punched his ticket and rode the old silver bullet right off the face of the earth and out of Allen’s life forever. Fortunately for Allen, his mother was a believer in life insurance. And so, with his father out of the picture, Allen was entitled to quite a hefty sum of money on his dearly departed mother’s behalf. Not to mention the respectable sum his father had saved up despite his habits. Then of course there was the house. A quaint little colonial that Richard had inherited from his parents on the outskirts of the city. Allen hadn’t wanted any ties to that hell hole, and so, sold the place and decided to rent a little apartment to himself out in the county.
His lifestyle didn’t require much money so Allen never got a job. Even if he couldn’t afford not to work, he wasn’t so sure that he would be able to. Ever since his mother’s death, Allen had experienced a steady decline in his ability to function socially. He loved the idea of being involved in a social circle but couldn’t bear the heartache that came with interpersonal relationships. So, Allen created his own characters he could be close with from a safe distance, like good old Jack Terrington for instance.
Snapping back to reality, Allen realized he had been lost in thought for some time. The sun was beginning its decent in the western sky, meaning it was time to head home. He stretched as he stood up from the park bench, breathing in deep to feel that warm summer air fill his lungs, then started towards home.
Allen stepped hurriedly, looking to put some distance between him and the setting sun as it began pushing its way into the trees. A block out of the park he stopped at a vending machine and inserted 50 cents for the latest edition of the daily sun. Most people read their papers in the morning, but Allen thought it was best to save today’s drama for the evening. No sense spoiling a perfectly good afternoon with the news.
Allen tucked his paper under his arm and began his eight block journey from the park back to his apartment. The sun was pushing hard against the trees now, forcing its way into the earth and threatening an imminent darkness which Allen did not care to be a part of. The world became a strangely different place when the sun went down. As if, when that virtuous orange glow at sunset disappeared and the moon rose to prominence in the sky, casting its sickly ashen light across the earth, it gave birth to a fiendish and perverted nature in those caught in its glow.
The last shades of orange were beginning to fade in the sky as Allen stepped through the glass double doors of his 13 story apartment complex. He stood briefly in the lobby and took a deep breath. The fluorescent glow of the lobby lights reflected off the linoleum floor creating the illusion that you may as well be standing in the ICU instead of the newly remodeled lobby of a rundown apartment building. Allen breathed out a sigh of relief and made to step towards the stairwell before changing his mind and moving for the elevator. He pressed the button to go up and stood impatiently staring at his shoes, his left foot tapping a fast, steady rhythm on the bright white linoleum floor. The elevator let off an emphatic ding as the door slid open. Allen stepped through pivoting on his left foot and punched the number 13. Folks said it was an unlucky floor but that never bothered Allen. He was just happy to be as far away as possible from the chaos taking place on the streets down below. Allen fell back hard against the far wall of the elevator just as the doors began to close and felt all of the tension leave his body.
The doors were about two thirds shut when Allen heard heavy footfalls that sounded like maracas dragging around the floor (shacka shacka sha sha shacka ka). “Yoooooooohooooooo!” A wrinkled hand worked its way around the closing door forcing it to slam on its brakes and back into reverse. An elderly woman whom Allen had dubbed Mrs. MacArthur shuffled her way into the 5 x 5 death box that Allen had somehow convinced himself would be okay to take tonight despite his usual preference for the stairs.
“Hoobie doobie!!” Mrs. MacArthur exclaimed as she breathed heavily. “Almost missed it. This thing just takes forever if you don’t catch it at the right time. You know they really should put a second one of these lifts in here but oh I know they’re just too damn cheap to do anything like that.”
“Mmhm,” Allen muttered under his breath as he pressed his back even harder against the far wall of the death box. He breathed in deep and closed his eyes. His deep inhale drenched his nostrils with a thick, musky scent of cheap perfume. Mrs. MacArthur, probably in her late 80s, smelled as though she had jogged through a J.C. Penny like a marathon runner approaching the finish line while being showered with an array of sample fragrances to celebrate her near completion of the race. Of course, in this case, the race was a metaphor for life and it was clear to Allen that Mrs. MacArthur was pretty close to the finish line. The heavy blanket of perfume she wore did its best but still couldn’t mask the underlying odor of decay (like a mildew slowly building under the basement carpet) that inevitably begins to take over the human organism as it inches closer to death.
The car lurched to a stop on the ninth floor, Mrs. MacArthur’s stop. “Have a good evening dear.” She said as she shuffled out of the elevator much in the same way she had come in. Her scent trailed her like a comet down the hall as the doors closed behind her leaving Allen all alone as the elevator carried him up to the top floor. The doors opened one final time and he stepped out, head down, and walked briskly down the hall towards his corner apartment.
As he reached for the door he heard the lock unhinge from his neighbor’s apartment across the way. Allen pushed the key in hastily, turned the lock, opened the door no more than 2 feet, slid through the opening and closed the door gently behind him. He breathed deep in the dark comfort of his home and then turned on the light.
There wasn’t much space in Allen’s apartment, but then again, as a single man he didn’t need much room. The kitchen stood immediately to the left of the door. A small nook of a kitchen with barely enough room for the appliances it boasted; A full sized refrigerator (which housed mainly frozen meals and a wide variety of fruit and juices), a gas range which had seen action barely enough times to count on one hand over the years Allen had lived there, and a unused dishwasher which Allen had converted into a storage unit for the newspapers he deemed worthy of saving. Allen’s living room display boasted a neat, tidy, and possibly over simplistic set up of a sofa and two lounge chairs flanking and empty coffee table in the center. On the wall opposite of the sofa, which in most homes boasted a television and entertainment center, was a most impressive display of literature that would have been the focal point of any librarian’s wet dream. From floor to ceiling, stretching from one end of the room to the other was a collection of books numbering well into thousands. Every book that Allen had ever read sat organized and handsomely displayed on this mammoth of a book shelf that served as Allen’s home library. Nestled between the kitchen and Allen’s mountain of books, stretched a narrow hallway leading directly to the bathroom and, on the right, Allen’s bedroom.
Allen walked over and sat his paper down on the previously empty coffee table before moving to the kitchen to prepare himself a hearty dinner consisting of Raisin Bran Crunch and two apples. He grinned with an eager anticipation as whole milk cascaded over the freshly poured cereal. The cereal began to pop lightly as the air pockets in the flakes yielded way to the heavy pressure of liquid breaking through their delicate barriers. Allen moved to the living room and sat his cereal down on the coffee table. Cereal was always best, not immediately after the milk was poured, but after a minute or two when the flakes had time to absorb some milk but still delivered that hearty crunch when you bit down. With his cereal on the coffee table, Allen took two healthy bites from his apple and picked up the paper.
Sometimes he wondered why he bothered reading the paper at all. Most of what he found in the news just fueled his desire to push even further away from society and into his own fabricated version of the world. He did, however, enjoy the good stories where some humanitarian bursting with bonhomie stuck their neck out to do some good in the community. But, those stories were few and far between.
“HRRRRUMMM…” Allen let out a musing sigh as he finished the last bite of his apple and read the headline on today’s paper: Fourth House Fire in Two Months Claims Two More Lives. According to the article, 45 year old Tony Alexander and 40 year old Jessica Harper burned to death two nights ago when Tony’s house caught fire in the middle of the night and grew rapidly into a towering inferno. Tony’s wife, Lauren Alexander, was out of town at the time of the fire. Police are still investigating the cause of the incident.
“This world is such a mess.” Allen pushed his paper aside, picked up his cereal and bit down heavily on a heaping spoonful. Perfect timing! Not too soggy, not too crunchy. He stared through his bookcase, chewing and contemplating the string of fires over the last couple of months. Four house fires and, all in all, seven people killed. The police had yet to release anything to the press, but it was clear they were investigating a possible connection between the fires. He set down his finished bowl of cereal and picked up his second apple. He stood solemnly in a state of heavy contemplation and walked in slow, floating strides across the room to his collection of literature. He walked the length of the wall gently brushing his fingertips along the cracked spines of the stories he’d vanquished over the years. When he reached the end, he stopped and stared out the window that spanned the length of the far wall of his apartment. He stared through his own ghostly reflection in the window at the people that raged about on the street below. They all moved with such focus, committing the sins that would grace the headlines in the paper over the next couple of days. Allen let out a deep sigh and drew the blinds, closing himself off from the world below. He turned wearily and grabbed the paper off of the coffee table. Folding it neatly he brushed his hand over the front page a final time before shuffling to the kitchen to deposit the paper into his personal archive. He shut off the kitchen light and made his way to the bedroom. Allen flicked the switch and his room lit up in a dim blue light. Mostly everything in Allen’s room was blue. The carpet and the bed were a deep navy which was highlighted by light blue walls. The only piece of art in Allen’s apartment hung steadfast over his bed, showcasing an ambiguous mountain peak falling into a still sea. There was one window in the room located on the far, center wall of the room. The curtains had been pulled shut some time ago and Allen intended them left that way. A twin sized bed sat centered on the left wall, adjacent to a small wooden night stand with a clock radio on the far side, a reading lamp perched in the center, and a book at its base. Bent on his escape from his own reality, Allen undressed, laid down in bed, and picked up his book, transporting himself to a world full of endless possibilities before falling into a deep and heavy sleep.
-- TBC
Submitted December 23, 2016 at 10:02PM by jlunz1 http://ift.tt/2hk4Ut6 shortstories
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