One week had passed since Millicent Mumford had been shot and killed, adjacent to the Cranbrook Ice Cream Truck, at exactly 4:27PM last Wednesday. It was the kind of instance that ignites urban legends--useless storytelling and reasoning that wafts into the ether of a rather unfortunate game of telephone between the neighborhood moms. For decades they will tell it wrong and my grandchildren will be recanting some version of it that is reminiscent of Columbine 1997.
It was really just a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time--as so many of these missteps are chalked up to. Millicent ordered a rocket pop. Unbeknownst to her, this was the last rocket pop on the truck.
Sheldon Kittridge, the middle aged bibliophile living across the street became acutely familiar with each and every one of the children. He thought that staying indoors, cloaked in silence with the words of people that would always be smarter than him would somehow make him better, would somehow cure him of his voyeurism. But it didn't.
In fact, it just made him more curious and as the days of summer wore on, he found himself at his bedroom window each afternoon looking for new flaws, new idiosyncrasies to harp on. And on Wednesday, he zeroed in on Millicent--and the way she dripped the red, white, and blue popsicle all over the front of her sundress.
She was target practice. And like that--Sheldon Kittridge became the town sniper. They took him away before he let go of the rifle.
"This is my book depository," he said.
"Not anymore," said the sheriff.
And I couldn't help but wonder what would've happened if she had ordered vanilla. Fuck.
Life and chance go hand in hand!!!!
ReplyDeletethis one is begging for a longer narrative. The problem is the reader has no time to get Sheldon's back story, or Millicent's either. So we are not sure who to care for, or if we should care at all. However, the neighborhood voyeurism was just on the cusp of becoming interesting. Interesting story.
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