Short Stories

Michael and the Whimsical Watchman

My Landlady’s blood covered every inch of my kitchen, like someone wanted to clean and accidentally put the mop in the wrong bucket. “Whoops that’s not the cleaner. Oh well It‘ll have to do!” This was beginning to piss me off, I couldn’t see my stalker and yet he still persisted to taunt me, to tell me I’m watching you and there was nothing I could do about it, because well I couldn’t. I guess I was going to have to go call the cops …again.

As I walked past Amanda, I poked her to see if she had thawed yet. She rather froze up when she saw the blood, everyone always did. I could not blame her; I froze the first time I saw a dead body too. It was at my great uncle Avery’s funeral. He was all done up in make up and clean looking which still irked me to this day, he was such a dirty bastard he didn’t deserve to look so…clean. I shrugged my shoulders she’d better thaw out soon. Detective Rodriguez was just as pissed off as me, he couldn’t catch the killer except he thought the killer was me. Which couldn’t have been anymore wrong, and how stupid would that be to call the cops ever time I murdered someone, I guess to through the suspicion off me but still that was pretty dumb even for me. He was in fine form tonight too. Asking all the standard questions and then some, determined to get her to confess to something I hadn’t done.

“Was he really with you? Are you sure? He didn’t disappear even for a minute?” I snorted and he glared at me, it wasn’t my fault really I couldn’t help laugh because I realized I did have the most perfect alibi. Amanda stuttered out a negative response and Detective Rodriguez pushed on what we were doing that night which, like a good little girl, she refused to tell him. Blushing in embarrassment, though I had no idea why she should be embarrassed.

“If you won’t tell me where you were how can you be so sure he didn’t slip away even for a moment?” I grew tired of his quizzing and Amanda’s embarrassing looks and I just snapped.

“Because sex is kind of hard to get away from, murder someone clean yourself up and then slip back before she notices you’re gone…even for me.” Detective Rodriguez and Amanda now looked equally embarrassed while a few lab tech people chuckled I rolled my eyes at their conservative thinking while a murder woman was sitting right next to them. I guess this means I was going to be evicted from my apartment.

“Why are you so calm and reassured? Don’t think we’re gonna find anything?”

“Detective the reason why I’m so calm is this has been done so many times it’s getting boring and stupid and if you do find anything Detective it is because you put it there to incriminate me.” Detective Rodriguez became red in the face.

“Are you accusing me of planting evidence?”

“Sir? The M.E. needs to talk to you before you leave.” A young detective in blue interrupted us.

“YES! Fine, fine!” As he walked off Amanda told me we needed to “Take a Break”. Every guy knows what that means. No more free sex. I was really going to miss that aspect of Amanda. I could have done without that whole “relationship” ah, but the sex. Oh, well win some lose some. I watched as they took my landlady’s body into the car and out to the morgue. Maybe this was a good thing. It was an omen telling me to get out of Basin Valley this rainy dreary place. It’s bad mo-jo that’s what this place was. Maybe if I moved my bad mo-jo would stay here in Basin Valley. Not likely. I have to get out of this town, somewhere where I haven’t slept with almost every woman in town. I should move to Vegas. Money’s easy…sort of, Women are looser…for a price but what wasn’t these days, plus someone kept killing people in my apartment. My own little whimsical watchman who thought it was funny to watch me squirm under pressure. Bottom line I needed to get out of Basin Valley.

After the cops had cleared up and collected evidence and were through questioning me, “for the time being”, I went over to my pothead neighbor, Jerome’s place because my place was still…messy. Jerome’s real name was Herman, which sounded more like a pencil pusher from Massachusetts than a dealer from Basin Valley did. I crashed at his place more and more frequently since seven months ago. Like he cared he was too high most of the time to even take notice of me, as long as I paid for my half of the pot he could have cared less if I was a murder.