Fiction Friday-Small Things
This story was inspired by a personal experience. Someone close to me was in for gallbladder surgery. Post operation, the hospital overdosed them on Demerol. Fortunately they lived. And no, I didn't go on a killing spree.
Small Things
Mark H. Walker
He was meticulous. Perhaps that was why they never caught
him.
Neat, near
military cut blond hair, tan Dockers, and a blue Lacoste sport shirt, he was
the epitome of normalcy. He bent over the basement workbench, a small desk lamp
illuminating his work, tools pegboarded in neat rows behind the pool of light.
Examining his current project with pale, ice blue eyes, he hum-sang an old
Beatles’ tune.
"Yeah, we're gonna have a party, party. Yeah, we're
gonna have a party, party." The same line. Again and again.
The house was empty, no wife, no kids. He could only love
once. They had ended it —the men in the white coats.
"Oh, we are terribly sorry, sir," they said.
"Some type of reaction to the anesthesia," they said. He knew; they
killed her. To them it was just another day, they drove away, chatting on car
phones, laughing like they were safe. He knew; no one was safe.
A little glue here, solder there. A battery. Strange how
the small things could change your life. 20CC's of Demerol had changed his.
His movements were unhurried, precise. Haste makes waste, he chuckled. Selecting a pair of needle nose
pliers from the pegboard, he crimped a wire on the small lump of circuitry in
front of him. His hands were large, yet the fingers were long and slender. The
middle digits of his right hand were motionless.
"Piano player hands," his Moma had said. And play
he had—till the man (he refused to call
him father) caught him stealing a buck out of his wallet. The man, drunk as
usual, had taped his hand shut over a cherry bomb and lit the fuse.
"That'll teach you to keep your hands where they
belong," the man said, laughing at the terror in his stepson's eyes.
He still lacked feeling in those fingers.
But feelings didn't matter anymore. Feelings hurt.
He stood and walked to the refrigerator gently purring
in the basement corner. He pulled one of the neatly stacked cellophane
wrapped packages off the interior shelf and a Diet Coke from the door.
Returning to his bench he unwrapped the clay-like substance and with
painstaking care finished the project.
Time to relax. Opening the Diet Coke, his eyes drifted to
the wall above the pegboard ...to the clippings. There were many of them. All
neatly trimmed and spaced.
"SEVEN DIE IN HOSPITAL BOMBING," read one.
"SURGEON DIES IN MYSTERIOUS AUTO EXPLOSION," read
another.
Yes, the men in white coats need to feel the pain.
Carefully he placed the device in the box addressed to Mercy General Hospital
Comments