Just Another Day

Just Another Day

                 
By


          Joe S. Thomas
 


Tim and Eric were neighbors.  Both boys were in 7th grade and were picked up and dropped off at the same bus stop.  After school the two boys decided to go to their respective houses, ditch their books and pick up their scraggly fishing gear to meet at the trail that led to their secret fishing hole.  Eric made it back to the trail first and sat on a fallen tree awaiting his friend. After an hour, Tim’s head finally became visible to Eric who was a little angry that he had to waste an hour waiting for his buddy to show back up.  Eric ran up to Tim noticing a strange look on his friend’s face. As Eric started to give him a verbal thrashing, he noticed his friend had a sad, crestfallen look on his face as he walked right by Eric without saying a word or making eye contact.  He simply started down the trail with Eric trying to catch up after untangling his gear that had fallen over on the log. “Wait up Tim, damn, I can only walk so fast.” Tim continued ahead without a word or look toward his friend. As the boys came to the fishing hole Tim took to the right side of the creek so Eric decided to go to the left.  Usually the boys fished side by side, but Eric was pissed that his friend was ignoring him and he also thought that Tim may like a little time alone. The boys fished for a while and though they were a ways apart, Eric could still see that strange look on his friend’s face. Eric fished for thirty minutes or so and finally stopped paying attention to Tim.  After a while, Eric looked over to where Tim was fishing only to find him gone. “What an asshole,” Eric mumbled as he released the few fish he’d caught and had on his stringer. He packed up his gear and made his way back down the trail and to his house without seeing Tim for the rest of the day. Eric was so pissed that he didn’t even make his nightly after dinner call to his friend.  He went to bed pissed and thinking of how he was going to give Tim an earful at the bus stop tomorrow. If he didn’t watch it, he’d give him more than that. Morning came and Eric got ready for school, grabbed his sack lunch from the counter, gave his mother a peck on the cheek and started toward the bus stop rehearsing his angry speech prepared for Tim. Eric got to the bus stop but Tim was nowhere around.  The bus was coming up the street and Tim was nowhere around. Eric wondered if his friend had become sick or something. Maybe his mom or dad would drop him off because he was certainly missing the bus. The two boys shared their home room class and Eric was still practicing his anger when he walked into the classroom. Tim’s desk was empty. As class began and role was called, Ms. Mullins asked Eric if he knew where Tim was or why he wasn’t at school today.  Eric shrugged his shoulders in a hateful manner so Ms. Mullins didn’t press the situation. After school Ms. Mullins approached Eric and asked him if he could drop off Tim’s lessons since the two were friends and lived fairly close to one another. Eric wanted to tell her no, but he begrudgingly accepted his mission from the teacher. Eric got off the bus after school at the bus stop and walked home. He was hoping he would see Tim somewhere awaiting him, but this wasn’t the case.  Eric made it to his house, unzipped his backpack and grabbed Tim’s assignments. He walked downstairs and told his mother he had to run Tim’s assignments over to his house. “Be careful” Eric’s mother said. “I want you home in time for dinner. Tim can join us if you’d like.” Eric left his house, grabbed his bicycle, hopped on and headed for Tim’s with an angry head full of questions. Eric had cooled off a little as he pulled his bike into Tim’s driveway where he noticed both of his parent’s cars were in their usual spots, but they should have been at work until at least 5 O’clock.  Eric dropped his bicycle close to the front porch and made his way up the steps to the front door. He knocked 3 times on the door expecting one of Tim’s parents to answer. Nothing. He knocked 3 more times before walking around back to the sliding glass doors that opened into the den. Eric had a strange feeling in his stomach that he couldn’t explain. He thought of just leaving the homework under a rock on the porch when he remembered the key Tim’s parents hid under a rock at the back because Tim usually made it home an hour or two before his parents. Eric found the rock, grabbed the key and walked to Tim’s bedroom window and knocked on it before he decided to try the key.  He certainly didn’t want Tim’s parents thinking he was a burglar attempting to break into their home. Again, there was no answer to his knocks. Eric walked back around front and gently put the key into the lock and turned the door knob very slowly. He poked his head around the door before he entered and still he saw nothing. He entered the house and lightly shut the front door behind him. He wanted to yell out to make his presence known, but something held him back from doing so. Eric’s stomach tightened with each step he took. He made his way around the first floor of the house and saw nothing unusual, but he also neither saw or heard anything that would make him think anyone was at home.   He walked to the staircase that led upstairs but hesitated as his foot landed on the first carpeted step. A small voice told him to leave. He felt the small hairs standing on his neck. He smelled a familiar smell, but he’d never smelled it indoors. It smelled like gunpowder from when Tim’s dad would occasionally take the two boys to the local dirt pit to shoot guns. Eric closed his eyes and willed himself to make his way up the steps to the second story of the home. Opening his eyes, he saw the family photos hanging on the wall. Tim was a toddler then and they looked like the typical happy American family. With each step he took toward the second floor, the smell of gunpowder mixed with another foreign smell hit Eric’s nostrils.  Eric remembered that Tim’s parent’s room was on the right at the top of the stairs. Though something within told him no, Eric willed himself to the doorway of the parent’s bedroom. Eric gently wrapped on the door to make his presence known so he wouldn’t scare Tim’s parents by sticking his head in without warning. When no answer came, Eric stuck his head around the door to find an unmade bed. Nothing else seemed out of order, but the smell became stronger. “Tim,” Eric finally said, but no answer came. Eric left the parent’s bedroom and walked down the hall to Tim’s room. He opened the door and saw that the room was empty. Eric was scared and confused. None of this was normal. He walked back to the parent’s bedroom and decided to walk a bit further into the room toward the bathroom.  He opened the door of the bathroom and saw the nude body of Tim’s mother resting in the bathtub with no water. She had a small caliber gunshot hole in the center of her forehead that was barely bleeding. She had one small trail of blood that ran from the wound and dripped down to her chest. Eric ran down the steps toward the garage. He opened the door to see the body of Tim’s father lying on the cold concrete floor missing the back of his skull and lying in a very large pool of blood. Eric wretched and threw up on the garage steps. Panicking, Eric yelled “Tim, Tim!” There was no answer. Eric wanted to phone the police but he knew the only land line in the home was located in the basement. He quickly ran toward the basement, hopped down the three steps that led there and entered the pitch black room.  He ran his hand along the wall, shakily looking for the light switch. He found the switch, flipped it and found the horrific sight of his best friend hanging at the end of his leather belt from a water pipe. These events took place in 1985. It is now 2019 and Eric still has to be sedated when his parents visit him in the Windhaven Mental Hospital where he has been since the day he found his best friend and his family dead. Eric’s parents never had the heart to tell him what had actually happened. It came out in the paper that Tim had taken his parent’s lives before going to the basement to end his own. There was never a reason given to anyone about why this happened. It simply just happened. “They always seemed like a perfect family,” read a line in the newspaper.