There’s a subdivision in the back of our neighborhood where the lot sizes are bigger, the houses are more prestigious and the cars in the driveway are slightly more expensive. My friend lives there.
He and his wife have had a long running disagreement as he has wanted a gun to keep in the bedroom. It was to protect his house and family from intruders, ostensibly, but mostly he likes the idea of owning a pistol and being able to shoot it on weekends with his son. His wife, on the other hand, is scared of guns and worried about them being in the house. She pointedly drew the line on him ever bringing one to the house and pushed for an alarm system to be installed instead.
He’s been an avid coin collector since childhood, and has amassed a large and valuable collection of coins. The more interesting coins he keeps in two museum quality glass cases in the downstairs den that’s become his office. He loves to show them off to dinner guests and the neighborhood kids. He’s even let me get a glimpse of his most valuable coins that he keeps somewhere else in the house. They are not as interesting as the ones in the case, but some of them could fetch enough money to pay for the car I drive.
One evening, coming home from work, he saw a neighbor’s teenage son with a kid he’d never seen before, hanging out in front of his house, glancing in the office window and talking quietly. As he pulled into the driveway, the two started to lope off quietly, as teens do. But as he got out of his car, his eye’s met with the kid he just barely knew, and something passed between them. He wasn’t sure what exactly.
That evening, as he was turning off the lights and TVs in the house, preparing for bed, he checked the doors and windows. At the front door, however, he made a point to quietly turn the deadbolt, unlocking it. He then cautiously tested to make sure the door could be opened. He went upstairs to bed, passing the alarm panel leaving it deactivated.
He couldn’t sleep that night. Lying in bed, he listened to the sounds of the house. He heard the soft breathing of his wife sleeping beside him. He heard the trains that passed a mile to the west. After some hours, he dozed off.
Some scratching, scraping noises woke him up. He heard terse whispering downstairs. Not waking his wife, he pulled on his sweat suit pants. Suddenly, there was the sound of smashed glass downstairs. His wife bolted upright in bed, terrified. He handed her the phone and calmly, but with authority, told her to call the police. He was going to go downstairs and confront the attackers.
It was then that they heard the yelling. There was no question that the voice was their eight year old son Todd. "Stop!" Todd yelled at the top of his voice and somebody loudly rasped back, threatening in that high school bully sort of way. The father ran downstairs, all of a sudden much more desperate. When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he glimpsed the back of one of the two kids he saw earlier that day, running out the open front door.
Turning to the French doors that opened into the den, he saw his worst nightmare. Lit by the tiny halogen bulbs in one of the smashed cases, his son, his little man, Todd, lay on the carpet. Surrounding Todd was broken glass, coins, his carefully crafted note cards that featured international flags and a paragraph describing the date, origin and rarity of the coins. And a growing pool of blood from beneath his sons shoulders.
There was a shard of glass in Todd’s throat. His mouth was opening and closing slowly, his eyes fixed on the den’s ceiling, and there was an awful gurgling, breathing sound coming from his baby boy. He called, screamed for his wife and carefully removed the glass from his child’s neck. The boy’s mother joined him moments later, and together, as a family, they held Todd for the three minutes, the five minutes, the eternity it took for Todd to die.
...
It’s two years later that I’m writing this. My friend and I don’t visit any more. Following Todd’s funeral, I spent some time there with his father over the next year, but we don’t really keep up much any more.
Oh, and he got his gun. A brand new, serious looking, automatic pistol that the local police use. I saw it when I was helping him box up his coins and clean out the office den. The den was redecorated, with new carpet and furniture, as a reception room. Family photographs and some of Todd’s mementos are in there. But the French doors remain closed, mostly.
The little yard sign in his front yard that has the security company logo has changed several times. With each change there’s additional gizmo’s on the doors and windows. Recently cameras were added pointing in all directions. That level of security has got to be costing him more money now. He’s still driving the same car that he had when Todd died. And I suspect that he’s selling off some of his coins.
[Fiction]