Senior Moment

As he got closer to the Autumn Pine’s front doors, he noticed that, for the first time in his experience, the staff had apparently left the front door unguarded. The little office behind the plexi usually populated by a particularly lame CNA named Hannah. Every single engagement of any kind that he’d shared with the girl was immediately added to a list of awful things that he, Jeff, had been forced to deal with. He developed each list during the course of his work-week, scribbling ideas into a miniature, college ruled notebook. His “Idea Book” he called it. 1000 people had visited his blog in the past 365 days, and he was vociferously proud of each and every single one. Hannah had enjoyed a rising popularity in the blog of Jeff’s life, as he’d begun to secretly to record his conversations with her, and then upload them, and stream them from his blog along with the transcript - texts he’d also posted. It was cruel, sort of, and he knew it. But she was such a bitch. So mean to everybody, that Jeff felt there was some karmic debts at stake, and he the self-appointed bill collector. Faithful servant of a greater good.

But today she’d vacated her post which was way out of character. This, in concert with the way the electric-eye sliding doors were stuck open about two feet apart, the way they’d look, he thought,(at the same time chuckling over the absurdity of it) if somebody had forced their way in. As if anybody would waste the effort trying to get into a place that smelled like AP

He came to the nurse’s station in the middle of the floor and found it completely empty. The door open was one thing, but nobody home in the middle of the floor in the middle of the day? Just as he stepped away from the station he made the connection: Thursday AM: Movie day. Whole place usually went if it was a good one. Today - he saw - was a good one. He picked a one - sheet headed by the words MOVIE SCHEDULE off the deserted common desk in the hallway. On The Waterfront had been the first entry of the day, but somebody had crossed it out, shoe-horning The Deer Hunter into the margin and rainbowing it over the redacted Brando classic. The Deer Hunter was Jeff’s favorite movie hands down. He forgot about his grandmother. He forgot his infant son stuck in the his locked car. If he acted fast he’d be able to catch most of Deer Hunter's three long hours, begining his viewing well before the awesome Russian Roulette scene. Just then, a blop of what looked like wet red clay, landed dead center of the movie list. It splattered, and the blowback had almost completely covered, the schedule pad. Jeff grabbed at it but it was slippery, wriggling out of his spasm-wracked fingers.

Greaaaaate. Jusssss….

And he died, crumpled to the floor still clutching the pad. Jeff’s legs did a funny little twitch dance as the last smidge of electricity bolted through him. The gigantic cop who’d shot him in the back of the head smiled at the pathetic little movements, and soon he was belly laughing like a loon at the corpse he’d just produced. He was still laughing as he raised the three-foot sledgehammer overhead, and….

Brought

it

down. (smack/splat!)

A strange, desperate sounding laugh, and there wasn’t a soul around to hear it.