When the fourth monkey misbehaves

So, here is the first tidbit of my current project



When the Fourth Monkey Misbehaves
By G.W. Hogg
©4-9-05

Carric Scott was not a good man and most people you asked would agree. Though they would rarely say he was a bad man, few really knew him.
That morning, he got off the New York subway at his usual stop. Rode the elevator up to the eighty-fifth floor, badged in at the entrance to the office, and stopped to talk to the security guard.
Beverly, the security guard, smiled at Carric as he approached. He smiled back. She was a good looking woman of around forty, with the nice extra curves that women her age get. Black hair, cut neat and short. Carric always liked women in uniform, and she looked particularly fetching in hers.
She smiled again at Carric, as he put his laptop case on the counter. “Would you like to come over for dinner tonight?” She asked.
“Sure, anything special?”
“No, I just thought I’d like to have you over for dinner.”
“Should I bring something for dessert?”
“No.” She smiled and winked. “You can be the dessert.”
He smiled back. It was understood.
“Are you ready for your staff meeting this morning?” She asked.
Carric gave her a blank look, then suddenly realized what day it was. “Oh my gosh! I have treats today, and I didn’t bring anything!”
”You had better hurry, your meeting starts in half an hour.”
“Can I leave my laptop here?”
”Sure.”
They exchanged smiles and winks and he walked to the door. She hit the button, and the door unlocked.

As he rode the elevator down, he realized that he had not badged out. The system would still show him in the building. It didn’t matter to him, but some anal retentive security guy would see that he had badged in twice that day, and out only once. The might think that he was still in the building at two o’clock in the morning. This didn’t worry him, as he rode down to the first floor.
Out onto the busy sidewalk, passed everyone who was hustling to work, from work and where ever New Yorkers went at that hour of the morning. He walked the several blocks to the bakery that he knew.
Just before Carric entered the bakery, he heard a large explosion behind him. He spun around and looked up. The upper floors of the office building were he worked, were now engulfed in flames.
He stood there, silently, watching. Passersby stopped and looked also. Soon there were gasps from the crowd, fingers pointing, murmurs that were getting louder.
They all watched, as the flames grew, licking up the upper floors of tower.
Carric had worked in the tower long enough to recognize that whatever had caused the explosion and fire, was either at, or a few floors from where he worked.
Different people yelled, shouted, screamed, or quietly murmured. He heard someone say, ‘I saw a plane, I saw a plane hit the building!’

Carric didn’t care that much what caused it. All he knew was that someplace, probably in the basement of the Hudson building in Boston, where his company kept a small office; there was a record on a server, of Carric going in and Carric not coming out. That server also had a record of losing it’s connection with his office, on the eighty-fifth floor.

Everybody leaves, Carric knew. Sometimes you leave on your own, sometimes you had leaving forced upon you. He unclipped the cell phone from his belt and removed the battery. Then he did the same to his pager. Then he turned from the sight of the burning building and continued on down the street.

He turned down the first alley he came to. Tossing the batteries in different garbage cans. He found a piece of pavement, took it, and smashed his cell phone, then his pager. He continued to walk down the alley, putting the smashed bits into different garbage cans. He then crouched down next to a dumpster, emptied his wallet of all identification, credit cards, library card and put it all in a neat pile. He fished a pack of matches from his jacket pocket and carefully set the little pile on fire. With a little help from some newspaper he found, within a few minutes, Andrew C. Scott, ceased to exist.
He stood and opened a hidden flap in his wallet. From there, he took out a drivers license and credit card with a different name on them. Put them into their proper positions and left the alley.
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Spring

Well, I guess it’s a sure sign of Spring. There are half a dozen houses for sale in our neighborhood. Most of them are around the half million dollar range. Boy, that sure makes things sound sooo expensive! Gosh. GW, you must live in some swanky neighborhood!
It’s so funny because we live in a very ordinary, middle class, suburban neighborhood. All the houses around us are similar, late fifties, tract homes.
I know of others who always want to move up to a bigger, fancier house. But who really needs more rooms to clean and a bigger mortgage. No thanks. Yes, a little more yard would be nice, but the house is comfortable. The other nice thing is it’s all one level. Two steps to get in, two steps to go out. With both Wonder Girl and me being a little clumsy, less to trip on.

So, as we walk the dog, we grab the fliers off the for sale signs and read about the houses. Some a little better, some a little less.

And now the house with the crazy man is for sale. We can see it off our back deck, hear their damn bird screech into the night. (yes, we thought of tossing some poison peanuts over the fence, just to quiet the night)
A few times, the crazy guy would come out, yelling and screaming. It has been quieter since their kid moved out.

There used to be a lot of comings and goings. Cars would pull up, young people would get out and go inside. Soon, they would leave. Probably dealing drugs. Then we stopped seeing their kid. The neighborhood got quiet again.

Yes, crazy guys still screams one in a while, but very infrequently.

Now if we could just reduce the crazy moms and dads, zipping by to drop off their kids at the school behind us.

Two Thoughts

I realized that she is one of those people whom I like more for who she is, than what she looks like.

I am not sure where that thought came from, it just popped into my head.


Damn them.

So I was chatting with my coworkers about the story I am working on. The crux of the story is of a guy who takes an opportunity to vanish from his life.
And I described his walking away, the discussion turned from why he was walking away, to the effect of those he leaves. Damn them! Now I find my thoughts sidetracked with the other characters, their lives, and how it affects them. I don’t even know where he is going, much less those he leaves behind. And now I am wondering.