He walked to his car and fumbled about, his keys were lost again. The time had come for a sharp remedy. He walked back into the house and fished a knife from out of the sink half-full with rinse water. He flicked the excess water from the knife and lowered the blade to his inner thigh, up high, inner thigh. With a fast push and slow stiff pull he sliced open his pants and his skin. The blood first raged and then meow-shyly wondered out. His fading leg no longer hurt and he would never forget or remember anything again.
His wife came home a bit late and found him there in a dark pool of cold blood. She found the site revolting. As such she ran out from the house and started to cry. Mm, she lost her wits. She walked up and down the road awhile and the sun began to set. She fell to the curb and felt her husband walking behind her, bending beside her and putting his hands on her warm open back, comforting her. She jerked forward, leaning heavily towards her knees and the pavement, folding her back in-half, away from his touch, still angry that he would be dead to her.
A living neighbor saw her on the curb and he called out to her; she did not respond and was obviously upset. The neighbor went back into his house and asked his wife to find out what was wrong. His wife found out and she told him to *"“call the ambulance!"” She also insisted that he go over to the neighbor’'s house and check on the man-- just in case. The grieving woman stopped crying and began to repeatedly bob. The neighbor's wife held a glass of inadvertently warm tap water—---for the bewildered hunk at her feet to drink.
Instead the neighbor reached for the glass of water from his wife'’s fat hand and drank half of it down in childlike, concentrated, swallows. Some lines of it ran out from the corners of his mouth and met again under his chin. Drip drop. He told his wife that the water was warm. He exhaled a bunch and walked to the dead man'’s door. When he inhaled, the air went in little by little-- semi-audible shots, each time sputtering thinner and faster near the end . He was bothered by the idea of seeing a dead man. Also he still had not known the means by which, or even if, the dead man was dead. He thought it was a fairly dangerous idea; perhaps the man was not dead and was just waiting to kill somebody before he actually would kill himself; one of those ‘murder-suicides!’ Maybe there was a mad-man on the loose. A killing! A killer! On the loose! He grimaced hard and blew even harder from his nose, and with that he felt suddenly brave, brave like in his tough-riggin’ days, fighting anybody and lots of girls-- and he walked right into his neighbor’s house and twice called out his neighbor’s name. Even though the dead man’'s name was one syllable alone the neighbor said it using two definite syllables: __-____? ___-____? Silence. The dead man did not answer and this relieved the inspecting neighbor . This unanswered title meant the dead man was truly dead. True enough. The nighbor walked into the kitchen and saw his dead acquaintance on the floor; on the floor, in blood. He was surprised by how much blood his dead neighbor was laying in. He thought about checking the pulse of the dead man but he really didn’t want to. What if suddenly the house doors shut and the wind howled and a baby screamed and the dead man’'s head bolted up and tried to bite him? No, he didn’t want to check the dead man'’s pulse. As he made his way from out of the house he worried that somebody below the stairs or under the bed was going to swipe his legs out from under him and drag him back to somewhere much like Hell, even though he was not walking on any stairs or near any beds. He had his fore-arms up high, pressed to his sides. He walked fast then faster and kept his crooked arms way up as he was terribly afraid. Outside the ambulance was sounding and he was grateful to be outside. He walked over to his wife and told her not to go back to the dead neighbor'’s house. She thought his suggestion was untimely and queer. She thought her husband looked tired. The wife of the dead husband heard nothing and wobbled her head about; she was groggy and retarded by grief-- the shock.
Before the paramedics arrived the police came. The police were singularly represented by one police man. The police man talked to the scared neighbor who informed him not to go into the house because the neighbor was already dead, but most importantly just not to go into the house. The police man recognized the neighbor'’s fear but considered going into the house “part of the job” and so without hesitation he walked towards the house. By this time more neighbor's were creeping out of their houses and onto the street and the sun had fully set. The moon was rising. The clean children played with the dirty children on the excited, festive street. The clean kids with knowing parents had freshly washed hair that was still wet and combed; parted to the side-- they wore pajamas. The poor kids were skinny and dirty and had ugly parents; they were still in their swimsuits and bounced on hardened bare-feet. The police man walked towards the house and paused for a moment, he then looked back at the crowd and pointed (hand shaped like a pistol) to the door and back to the crowd as if to say, “"This the house? This the one?"” Many members of the concerned neighborhood crowd responded, nodding their heads and a few said “"Yeah"” meaning, “"Yeah, that’s the house"” or "“Yeah, that one."” The police man walked in and found the man in the kitchen. The police man had his gun out-- just in case. The police man squatted down next to the dead man and felt for a pulse. The dead man was dead and had no pulse. The policeman was left-handed and looked at the knife lying on the left-hand side of the dead man’s body and thought, “"I bet he’'s left-handed'" and he felt pretty good about making such a sleuthy deduction. The police man pressed his index finger and middle finger on his dominant hand together and he touched the pool of blood. For a minute it seemed as though he was going to taste it, maybe even rub it on his gums to see if it was pure-cocaine---an old cop-trick, see. The blood stuck to his fingers and the coating was shiny and a thick red. The police man stood up and splashed his blood-laden hand around in the sink still half-full with rinse water. The police man used his radio. It was nearing 8 o’clock and the evening air was hot. The radio sounded back to the police man, it was another police man giving him procedural advice or perhaps telling him what to do without being too pushy.
...
* as opposed to "call an ambulance!"
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