Paranoid
2005-04-29 - 10:58 a.m.

He looked behind him, and they were still there. There were two of them now, tall wraiths leaning casually against the grafittied brick, kicking the dust and talking in hushed tones. They stood still now, but he knew that when he moved, they would move with him. Not immediately, of course. They would remain in place until he was just out of sight, until he was just too far away to hearing the steady beat of their ragged All-Stars against the blacktop. They would slowly slip into motion, like a dog feeling the slight tug of a leash. When he stopped again, they would be just in sight, leaning against anything nearby, waiting for him to move again.

Still, movement was inevitable. He couldn't stay in this alley all day, and so Ernie Allenbaugh began walking again. He resisted the urge to run, somehow feeling that accelerating his speed would somehow accelerate him on the path to his inevitable fate, which was most likely to end up dead in a back alley in New York, another stiff without shoes or a coat.

He walked a block and a half, forcing himself to keep his eyes ahead. There were people around. The two men would be crazy to try anything now. Of course, he thought, there are plenty of crazy people in this city. The thought made him step a little faster.

Two blocks from his home, and he was afraid to keep walking, afraid the two men would follow him, that they would rape his wife and kill his kid along with stealing his wallet and blowing his brains out. Finally, he forced himself to turn around. There was no one in sight. Ernie sighed and thought he was lucky to be alive.

We struggled up the front steps, the late hour feeling like a weight on his shoulders. He didn't feel like explaining to Emma, not tonight. Telling her again that it wasn't another woman, it was just that he was terrified of life in the city, how he thought everyone was out to get him, how he could barely sleep at night... She just laughed when he talked about it. He was paranoid, she said. He was a country boy, and she was born and raised in the city. He'd adjust, she would tell him. He knew what she would say. She spent a lot of her time reassuring him of something or the other.

He opened the door, and Billy was waiting. William Earnest Allenbaugh, named after his father and a worthless uncle no one ever saw anymore. Six years old, the product of a five year marriage and a nine month courtship. Ernie had always suspected that Emma was a little resentful about the whole ordeal. Not toward Billy himself, she loved him as a mother should, but toward Ernie. She'd been a little resistant toward getting in the backseat to begin with, but a little piece of latex and an urban legend about virgins had sealed the deal, and Billy was conceived on backseat vinyl in their senior year. Emma had been upset, of course, but she told Ernie that mistakes happen (not that she thought Billy was a mistake, she said), and she loved him anyway. Ernie didn't really believe it was so simple.

Billy threw his arms around Ernie's leg and gave him a big, childish grin. Ernie smiled down at him, the slash of white contradicting his troubled eyes.

"Oh, Ernie!" Emma rushed into the room. "Where have you been? Dinner's been ready for any hour, and you didn't call... I didn't know what had happened to you. They said you left the office at five and it's almost six..." One look at him, and she knew. Her concern dissipated, replaced by an amalgam of scorn and anger.

"What was it this time, Ernie?"

Ernie considered explaining, but instead he just shrugged his shoulders and endured her mockery for what must have been the thousandeth time. He knew where this would lead. He would get home from work some night and see a strange car parked out front. He would come inside, and hear moans and dirty talk coming from the bedroom. He would walk in to find her with someone who wasn't afraid of his own shadow, and she wouldn't be embarrassed or shocked. She would laugh, and tell him that he ought to be happy, that he'd finally been right about something. She would ask him to lock the door as he left, and he would do it. Who could blame her for wanting someone else?

Ernie ate a cold supper of pot roast and noodles, chased it with a shot of Jack Daniels, and then fell asleep beside the woman he knew would one day leave.

As it turns out, Ernie was wrong about this.

He had always thought the deadbolt on the little apartment looked flimsy, and he had been right about that. One quick twist of a pick, and the door was open. He had always told Emma that they should keep their valuables in a safe, and, if they had done so, the police might have arrived before the entire house was emptied.

He'd wanted to ask the landlord to fix the small half bathroom in the master bedroom, but it was going to cost him, and Emma had thought it could wait. If it had been working, Emma would have never known they weren't alone in their apartment. As it was, she walked into the bathroom on the other side of the apartment, and surprised to find two men in masks and ragged All-Stars searching the cabinets. She screamed, but the fans in the bedroom (she needed them for the quiet hum) and the furnace drowned her out. There were no urban legends to protect her this time.

When the men walked into the bedroom, they shot Ernie without even checking to see if he was awake. He was not, and they saw to it that he would remain that way indefinitely.

Billy was a sound sleeper, and he never even woke up.

The next afternoon, the bodies were discovered by Steve Grisham, a former football player who stopped by the apartment for his daily tryst with Emma. When he walked in, he found the two bodies and the child crying on the floor. He told the police he had just been passing through. Didn't know the family at all. They believed him.

At the funeral, no one seemed surprised. Ernie had always said something like this would happen. He was always so paranoid.