ECHOES OF SOLITUDE
Constantly washing his motorcycle, he'd never be able to ride; he stares down every driver who makes a u-turn too fast in what he thinks is his cul-de-sac rather than the towns or the neighbors. Vincent King was 75 years old and had lived in the same house for years. Building it from the ground up, he took on this project with his wife, and they raised three children there. All grown up, one of them passed away from cancer while the second overdosed and never woke up, and now the third moved away from the city to West Virginia to create a life of her own.
The people in the neighborhood called him King, at least those who were around long enough to get to know him for this sweet side and not a curmudgeon. His wife had also passed away from a terminal illness ten years back. King always felt she had left him because of her broken heart, as pieces of their family had dropped off all too close to each other. She begged King to move out of the house and go down to Florida to be a snowbird and live the rest of their life in a condo. But King was stubborn enough to leave his other child behind, so he was able to raise and take care of his home. The best part was that the home didn't talk back and was always happy to see him.
And once she passed, King was officially alone. Once he reached his seventies, King believed the mind's internal monologue shuts off. There is no stream of consciousness. Just your ability to handle people's bullshit drops off dramatically, and your moodiness is a replication of your two-year-old self.
Having retired from the force long ago, King's day didn't consist much. That's why he loved the summer so much. Sitting on a chair inside his garage with the door open early in the morning. Just enjoying his cup of coffee and letting his eyes get adjusted to the sunlight when he looked up at it. King cared deeply about his lawn and flowers, watering them daily and saying sweet nothings. Then, he'd sit outside on his porch steps through the early afternoon, nap sometime after, cook dinner, sit out in the sunroom to read, and be with the remains of the day before the night was over.
The neighborhood moved on without King a few years back in terms of the technological advances of being a homeowner. Don was the only neighbor who really talked to King, checking him on periodically during the winter to ensure he wasn't lonely. He would sometimes bring him food Don's wife cooked. Don would walk over to King's garage every morning to give him a daily rundown and just shoot the shit bringing over his dog during walks for King to play with.
King took a while to like Don. He always thought Don talked too much about himself and nothing of importance. He judged Don for purchasing foolish landscaping machines and never keeping his grass as green as it should be.
King only spoke to one neighbor because he imagined himself to be the dictator of this neighborhood. Always judged others on the home improvements they were doing, yelling at the children in the area for riding their bikes for too long and constantly knocking on doors when he felt the noise during a party was too loud. King went as far as installing a shock fence so the kids in the backyard behind him could not step foot on his lawn to grab their lost baseball or football. Once it went over the line - it was gone forever.
The old man came close to having a heart attack last year when the neighbors behind him threw a barbeque, which was pretty tame but not up to King's noise level standards. He lost and started swearing at the neighbor's kids for playing with the wiffle ball too loudly, which didn't go over well with their father and resulted in him and King exchanging colorful words. It didn't help that everyone at the backyard BBQ was pretty liquored up and came close to forming an angry mob to burn King's home down in the middle of the night with him in it.
It was not until one Wednesday afternoon that King went too far and snapped. One of the neighborhood kids had just learned how to ride a bike and finally got the hang of it, becoming confident and riding faster.
The kid was flying down the sidewalk and hit a lip, which threw him off his path, jerking him onto King's lawn, tearing up his grass from the dirt and onto the sidewalk. King caught this incident from a bird' s-eye view on his porch. He flew up so fast that his knees and hip flexors snapped in sync. He skipped down his steps at full speed, getting to the kid before being able to get the bike off the ground and ride away home to Mommy.
King grabbed the kid by the collar of his shirt and looked past the adolescent eyes, delivering a threat that should only be directed toward convicted murderers in an interrogation room. Not realizing the kid was turning blue because King's hands were wrapped around his neck, squeezing. Letting go and dropping the kid back to the ground - King came back to reality and backed away into his property, going up his porch steps faster than he came down.
Looking from the top of his porch, King looked around his cul-de-sac to see if there were any witnesses to this aggravated assault against the youth. One of the newcomers to the neighborhood had caught the entire thing on camera and moved her phone down as King made contact with her device. Nothing being said, she scurried away inside her home and slammed the door shut, echoing through the surrounding homes.
