maybe nickel

tomoatmeal:

“And so after the gigantic vat of chocolate spilled on my son, he just ran off?”

“Yep,” said Bill, trying his best not to crumble under the weight of his neighbor’s skeptical gaze.  ”I think he was uh…embarrassed…and so he uh, just was like I’m out of here and then he ran off into the woods.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

Ellen looked around hopelessly as if something might suddenly pop into focus that would better explain her son’s disappearance.  The signs of her heightening exasperation, though perfectly natural, worried Bill and he shifted nervously as if willing her to retreat back into her home.

“Please don’t look behind me,” Bill prayed to himself.  ”Please don’t look behind me.”

But he knew that it was too late because now Ellen was frozen, her eyes fixed on something behind Bill.  Something gigantic.  Clifford.

Her dilated pupils evidence enough that his stupid dog had wandered out from behind the house, Bill pulled the 9mm out of his belt, lifted it, and fired a single shot into his neighbor’s forehead, killing her.

That night, Bill and his wife sat on the patio, anxiously awaiting Clifford’s next bowel movement.  The one, suspected Bill, that would contain any evidence of his eating a chocolate covered neighbor.

“I just wanted Emily to have a dog,” said Bill, his tired eyes still filled with tears.

“I know Bill.”

“I didn’t think that…”

“I know.”

With his wife’s arm around him, Bill held his hand up, fingers spread, to study it in the moonlight.  It looked like the hand of a stranger.  Someone older, he thought.  But someone familiar - as if he’d been afraid of this person his entire life.