Fiction Friday #171

This week’s Fiction Friday prompt:

“Albert is Dead”

Along with romantic scenes, many writers find writing a scene which involves killing a character a challenge. Here is your chance to write a scene where a truly objectionable character dies.

Step 1. Go and read “Doggone” – a Friday Fiction first draft piece from a week ago.

Step 2. Decide who, what and how Albert dies. It may be accidental, a blundered break in, monster attack – or by one of the many characters within the short story who may or may not have a motive.

Step 3. Now write… You can choose to be as graphic or lyrical as you like, choose to show but not tell – or just tell it all.

The only rule is – Albert must be dead by the end of the story.

The first part of this story (in italics) is “Doggone”, written by Annie Evett. I have posted it here, with her permission of course, so that you could get the whole back story.
Being that this week’s prompt was an exercise in finding the gall to kill your characters, I had no problem with it at all and found it to be not very much of a challenge. After all, anyone that reads any of my work knows that killing off my characters comes naturally to me. Regardless, I hope you enjoy what I have written this week and I do hope you enjoy the motive behind Albert’s death.

“Why would they get a brand new extended driveway and not park on it?  and look!” he slapped the screen, “Some people – no idea – leaving their old cars out on the street when they have a garage and a driveway to put it.”

His toxic barrage was interrupted by a distant barking dog.

Chapped hands frantically grasped a timer and he pushed the button to record the sound, watching it intently as his grin grew.

“Ha! Thats the one. Final council notification here we go.”  Albert stuck his tongue out as he pecked with two fingers on the keyboard. “ Dog barks on 2nd of August at these recorded times and for well in excess of the regulation time. “They are gone. Dog gone.. Instant removal and destruction of hound. Boom!” He shot a hand triumphantly up in the air. “I’ll be able to sleep now. No more barking dog.”

A loud crack echoed the small room, “Oh, me back.” Alberts joyous face contorted with pain.  “Linda wheres me meds?”

The sound of a drawer opening and shutting with slippered feet echoing up the hallway produced a tall harassed looking washed out blond. She poked her straggly hair behind her ear and handed him a glass of water and some pills.  “Well don’t move around so quickly.  You’ll do yourself a real injury.”

He grabbed the tablets from her hand. “You need to get a hair cut.”

Linda flushed and bit her lip. Tears she refused to let him see, welled in her eyes as she quickly turned about.

Albert frowned as he flicked his fingers over stack of rewritable DVDs. “Better do a back up of my surveillance while nothings happening.”

“I’ll put lunch on then shall I?”

“Get me some more blank DVDs when you’re at the shops will you? I’ve run out again.  And I need another packet of fags while you’re at it.”

“Now?”

“Wouldn’t be asking otherwise.”

“I’ll be off then.”

Albert ran the back up program and began reviewing yesterdays capture.  He grunted as his eyes flickered over the images in fast motion.

The inner garage door closed and he watched her back the car out of the driveway and leave on one the screens. He tapped away scanning at the multitude of small cameras he had hooked at various levels around his property. A quick movement caught his eye on one of the screens. With dextrous manipulation of the keyboard, he zoomed in. “Come on Mrs Forster.  Open your blinds. You’ve had them closed for weeks now.”  He lent closer as a thin hand reached around the blind to open the window for ventilation. “I wonder if she is still in her nightie?”  He ruffled his hair and grinned.

“Linda, another beer!” Then cursed as he remembered she had left on an errand.

The muscled bare torso of one of the neighbours caught Alberts attention as he carried out two small bags of refuse onto the street and opened his wheelie bin up. The rubbish trucks groans and whines could be heard up the street as it crushed and collected its treasures, but had not yet arrived at his end of the street. Marco attempted to push the second bag into his bin – but it was so tightly packed, the lid would not close.  He shrugged and sauntered toward Alberts footpath.

Albert jolted upward as he realised Marcos intent. “Not bloody likely mate. Not on my watch.”

Struggling and flapping He managed to get out of his chair and ambled out to the locked screen door. “Oi! Not in my bin you don’t”

Marco squinted from the footpath trying to make out the shadowy figure and pointed at the approaching rubbish truck. “He’ll be here in a tick mate. My bins full.”

“Well, your rubbish will have to wait till next week then won’t it?”

Albert grinned and slammed his front door for extra effect. Rushing back to his screens, he watched Marco stalk back into his house, one rubbish bag still in tow.

“That man needs to mow his lawn as well. Makes the place look like its colonised by renters.”

Shuffling back to his comfortable seat and overflowing desk,Albert put on his glasses, and peered into the backyard security screen and zoomed in on the playground equipment beyond his hedge. He fumbled for a blank DVD, slid it into place, pressed ‘record’ and zoomed in to the little girls shrieking with laughter on the swings. Delicate legs dipped high in the sky whilst light skirts fluttered and floated about their thighs.

Teenagers pushed themselves onto the scene, tripping over one another, obviously sharing a joke as their arms flailed around. Small rounded shapes appeared in the sky, dropped and disappeared from the shot. Alberts camera lense became hazy. He spat on his handkerchief and rubbed the screen squinting to clarify what was happening.

“Damned birds. I need to write to the council to complain about thier unhygienic waste matter being dumped willy nilly.. Now, what the hell are those kids doing in the park? Why aren’t they at school?”

Albert watched them as they disappeared around the pathway leading on to his street. “Thats it you lay-abouts. Get to school or you’ll hear it from me again!”  He set about completing his backups, occasionally checking the screens.

Loud giggles from the front of his house startled Albert, disturbing him from his work. A dozen eggs pelted their way onto his roof and front porch. A sound of scurrying feet on bitumen punctuated by more giggles. He checked another cameras angle which revealed splattered eggs over his lawn and back wall.

“Bloody kids. But I got you on camera this time you little bastards. Ha! Your parents will be footing my cleaning bill and then who will be laughing?”

He waved a newly ejected disc to the empty room and slipped it into a pre-addressed envelope to the local police and patted it comfortingly.

A discrete tingle sounded. He flicked the phone up to see it was Linda. “Yeah? You get lost?”

“Umm, just wondered if you could check if we had enough milk till tomorrow.  since I am still at the shops, though I’d save the trouble of going again.”

“Sppose I can check.”  He groaned with the effort of getting out of his chair.

“Sorry to get you out of your chair and away from your screens. Umm. I’ve got you more DVDs.”

Albert grunted and scratched his groin. “I’m going into kitchen now.”

Before leaving his room he habitually  checked the screens for any further movement. Lindas car was parked in Marco Torrisis  driveway. She was standing with her phone to her ear looking towards their house. Although he couldn’t seen her face, he knew she was biting her lip.

Carefully Albert reassured her as he stared at her image on his surveillance screens. “Yeah. I’m at the fridge now. We got milk.”

“Thanks” Lindas unusually breathless voice whispered.

“I’m going for a lie down now. I’ll probably be in bed when you get home.”

“Alright then.” She cleared her throat.  “I’ll go to the check outs now. See you in a bit.”

Albert watched his wife walk to the end of the new driveway and tape a note to Marcos front door.

She quickly turned and rushed back to her car and drove down the street and out of shot.

Albert stood over his camera controls and tweaked some settings. A light breeze had picked up and played with the note on the door. As he focused onto the note, the message revealed itself as it opened up. “See you at Wild Notes Karaoke Bar.”

Albert pushed his glassed back from his nose, pulled the remaining disc from the empty spindle and copied the episode to it. He then reached for a marker pen and recorded the date and time on the shiny surface.

He grunted and unlatched a hidden drawer. After shuffling through some thin files he found what he was searching for and popped the short taped episode into Marco Torrisis dossier.

He tapped it thoughtfully. “Probably about time Mrs Torrisi discovered some of his extra curricular activities, though might wait and see how deep this thing with Linda goes before playing that card.”

—–

Once out of her husband’s cameras’ viewing area, by her estimation at the end of the Correy’s property, Linda parked her BMW and took a glance at her watch.

9:17

If all was going as planned – she figured it was, what with her husband being as punctual as he was – Albert would be residing to the bathroom at 9:27. By her calculations, this would provide her a thirty second window to carry out her plan. Albert made it hard, and you have to give him credit, by having installed a small computer in the bathroom wall so that he could carry out his business and still keep his prying eyes on the world outside.

Little did Albert know, Linda had placed a small digital recorder in the planter at the bottom step, the one next to his office door. For the past four weeks, she had laid awake at night studying the day’s recordings. Like clockwork, at 9:27 she would hear the sigh of relief come from his office as Albert laboriously lifted himself from his chair. The next thirty seconds would consist of his slow, heavy footsteps accompanied by the sound of his cane – she wondered how it never broke under his weight – and then she would hear the slow creak and shutting of the bathroom door at the other end of the hall.

Linda walked around the block and entered Marco’s back yard, where he waited patiently on the stoop at his back door. Cigarette in hand, he looked up at her and asked “ready for this?”

“Yes, love. I left a note on your door telling you to meet me at Wild Notes. By now he’s zoomed in on it and read it and no doubt recorded it. In five, he’ll be on the shitter.”

“Good, good” he said as he took his final drag. Dropping it to the ground below, and stomping it out with his foot, he raised his previously occupied hand to Linda. She took hold and helped him to his feet. He wrapped his arms around her – she in return. After a brief moment, she whispered “it’s time.” The two friends let go of each other and walked around the side of the house. Mrs. Torrisi, wife of her dear friend Marco, signaled through the window as they passed with two thumbs up and mouthed the words good luck while shaking her head in the affirmative.

9:26

“Ready, Linda?”

“Ready.”

9:27

“One, two, three … go.”

The two sprinted down the street to Linda’s house. Linda, lighter and faster, arrived at the gate first, only to find it locked. Fear filled her eyes as she turned to warn her accomplice. A shadow rushed past her, leapt in the air, and sailed over the waist high picket fence. She took heed and followed instinctively the shape into the hedges by the front door.

Albert unbuttoned his slacks, lowered them, grabbed the railing on the wall, and lowered himself onto the john. He sighed and extended the monitor from the wall on its arm and switched it on. “There we go. Egging my house … little bastards … I’ll get you this time.”

In Albert’s design of the security system, he failed to point cameras at the outside walls of his house. He had been so confident in his monitoring of the perimeter that he failed to see the need. Using this to their advantage, the two intruders crept around the house concealed by the hedges on their hands and knees to the basement door. Marco looked behind himself to Linda and whispered “how far does the camera go?”

“You’re fine. When it sweeps left, open the door and we’ll scuttle in. Has to be fast.”

He signaled the okay to her and turned his attention to the camera. Watching intently as it swept left, then right, then left again, he waited. It swept right, he readied himself, and as it swept left again, he darted from the bushes, lifted the basement door, and disappeared inside, closing it behind him just as the camera began to sweep right again. He stumbled clumsily to the bottom of the stairs, narrowly falling and knocking over a rack of paint cans. Panic filled him as he realized his folly. After a short minute, daylight filled the stairway and Linda rushed in. Before he could blink, the sunlight was replaced with darkness and he found himself grabbing Linda and restraining her just as she was about to collide with the paint rack.

The gas canister was at the foot of the stairs just as Linda had said it would be. She grabbed the box of matches from the shelf at the side of the room where the washer and dryer were. Marco grabbed the can and they ascended the stairs into the hallway.

Creeping silently to the bathroom door, Marco removed the can’s lid. Linda picked up the box of tissues from the bureau and pulled several sheets through the top. They looked at each other, as if to ask are you ready for this? Nodding simultaneously in agreement, their hearts began pounding.

Marco placed his hand on the handle; Linda lit the box of tissues. She nodded to him and he swung the door open, tossed the gas can inside, and shut it. Loud shuffling and indecipherable screams emanated from within. Marco looked at his Linda to see her breathing wildly and frozen. As he reached his hand out, her paralyzed body came to life. She grabbed the door handle, turned it, opened the door, and tossed the tissue box inside.

A loud WHOOSH! filled their ears and the hallway turned orange as the fireball burst through the door.

—–

Marco and his wife, Linda, and several neighbors stood outside the white picket fence as the house burned. No one spoke, not even the children, as they all knew what had happened. Although none were a part of the plan, all knew that Albert was inside when the fire started and all knew that it was no accident.

The camera Linda set up in the neighbor’s yard recorded all the action as the fire trucks arrived and battled the blaze. Linda would watch that movie with her new partners, Mr. and Mrs. Torrisi for years to come, using it as fodder to feed the desire in their illicit love triangle.

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