Plate of Cookies

I wonder how I must have looked to my unseen eye. Thinking back, if anyone was watching, they would have found it extremely odd to see a skinny brown skinned boy with a pair of binoculars peering out of the window so late in the night. They might say I was spying on the Andrews' girl, Tracy, across the street. I wonder why people of today think that way. It's strange.

Anyways, I wasn't spying on the girl across the street. She wasn't even in bed when started my crazy habit. She was out partying. Don't ask me how I know this.

Funny thing. My mother always said there was an unseen eye watching all the time. No matter what. No matter how private your meeting is, there was always one who saw. Maybe she was making a reference to God, like most mothers in, sometimes, futile attempts to get their children to play nice.

Well, that's what you get for using Santa only in December.

That night, I was the unseen eye assigned to the Andrews family. Honestly, it was not my intention to play that role. I couldn't sleep. Something kept waking me up. Maybe it was that illegal cup of coffee I snuck to my room. Or it was the fact that I had a test the next Monday and I couldn't care less. Maybe the universe was trying to get me to study. For my own good, my mother would say. Whatever it was, I am really glad it kept me up. I wouldn't have my reputation today if I had slept on.

The silence of that night was irritating. I found that odd. I loved the quiet before. Why not that night? I thought it was because the silence didn't sing the same song it always did. If it did, I would be asleep by now. Since I couldn't sleep, I decided to spy on my dear neighbours across the street. The Andrews family.

I've always known Mrs Andrews to be a woman of strange habits but she was even stranger that night. I spotted her carefully arranging freshly baked cookies on a wire rack. They were ginger cookies. If my opinion mattered, coconut cookies would have been more preferable. I didn't bother myself to think about the possible reasons for her late night baking. This woman toasts her cereal the night before breakfast every night. She's just a ball of weirdness. Again, don't ask how I know this. There was a man behind her and he was no Mr Andrews. I was not 18 years old that night, but from the way he held her, I knew he was receiving some extra bed warming benefits from Mrs Andrews. Where are our morals today? Is staying with one man so hard for people? I criticised them yet a part of me agreed they looked better together. I could sense another set of divorce papers flying in soon.

Poor Mr Andrews. He was up in his room, on a lonely cold bed snoring while his wife got cosy with another. I've always wondered if he knew. And if he did, why he's still with her. Maybe that was what being a man meant. Maybe. That's stupid.

I didn't know if I should feel sorry for him. He was a mean man. Especially to me. I get it. I play on tricks on people but I don't play tricks on him. I wouldn't dare. I did once and.... I'd rather not say. He had a bad temper all the time. When he screams at you, the pharmacist two blocks away hears his voice. If he were masculine, it would have been more appealing but his bulky fatty body just made even more annoying.

Things were getting R-rated with his wife and my new interest so I took my eyes somewhere else. Tracy, the perfect innocent beauty, was arriving. She wasn't drunk. I could tell. She walked in. I badly wished I had some popcorn beside me. I expected drama. Some shouting, exaggerated fights. But like most parts of my life, I was heavily disappointed. She hugged him. The stranger.

That was unsettling. I wondered if, perhaps, I had known the wrong Mr Andrews my whole life. Maybe the man upstairs was not the husband. I would have taken that thought more seriously if I hadn't been at the wedding. If that scene didn't raise pillars in my mind, what happened next did. Maybe that's why I acted the way I did later in my life.

Mrs Andrews smacked her daughter's hand when she reached for the cookies. I'm not talking a playful hit. I'm talking full on black slap smack. The painful kind.

Binoculars are such amazing inventions. From my bedroom across the street, I could read their lips. It became clear. I was stupid not to have seen it coming. Poor Mr Andrews. He won't see the full moon tommorow. I wondered what life would be without him. Peaceful. Quiet.

The thought hurt a strange hurt. That's what your conscience does to you. It's the feeling that precedes guilt. I could let him die. God knows I would love a happier life with him gone. But, I think God knows I won't. Guilt is such a heavy load. Sometimes, I don't see the role of guilt in human life. It restricts pleasure. My teacher would say it ensures the right is done always. I don't think so. I think it pulls us away from what we want to do. My mother would say it keeps you on the right path. I don't raise an argument when she says that. I know how it would end from the beginning. She would talk of the pleasure I speak of as the devil's path to hell. Maybe, she's right. Maybe.

I should have taken a camera when I went over the next day. Then I could have shown it to the world. It would make an interesting movie, don't you think? My appearance drew a hated frown on Mr Andrews face. I would have walked out and left him to his fate if my conscience would have left me. There was something about the way he lifted his hand that nearly got me wetting myself. How embarrassing that would have been. Whoever said fat people are the happiest people clearly did not meet Mr Andrews. He was always in a foul mood.

I think I've said that already.

He was always hitting his daughter. For his wife, I'd rather not say. It's no wonder they wanted him gone. I should have understood. I did understand but my great conscience remained stubborn. Come to think of it, that may be man's greatest weakness. Or is it love? Whatever.

He did not believe me when I told him his delicious cheat snack was a death trap. Of course he wouldn't. Who would believe the lanky neighbour?

I would. Just saying.

I didn't blame him. This was, after all, the second time I had said something like that. Oh the curse of being a prankster. Since I couldn't leave him to meet an untimely death, I did the only thing I could do. The only thing I would think of.

I ate the cookies.

Did I ever say Mrs Andrews is an amazing baker? They were the best I had ever tasted. I don't mean to offend my mother but they were so good. A literal translation of a sweet death.

The end to this? I lived to tell the tale. Mr Andrews? He ate the cookies anyway.