Silhouette

Loni's neighborhood was a typical agricultural town area. Pretty farmhouses dotting miles of farmland scattered with wildflowers and livestock. It was plain and boring. It was the pinnacle of a sweet little farm town. And being so it was about as interesting as one could be. Which, in case that isn't clear enough, is not very. The one decent source of entertainment came from the house of the corner of her cul de sac. Not because it was cute or elegant like the other houses near her own tended to be but because it was quite the opposite. It was quaint and hidden by a line of trees, which seemed to be purposefully planted in a line to block any passerby's view of it, as if the house were ashamed of being seen. This is something that is slightly odd for a farming neighborhood. Though the residents tend to keep to themselves and remain more on the private side they also have a deep appreciation for showing off their earnings. This meant big green yards covered in lush greenery and flowers to draw in wildlife and a big freshly painted house. It was almost a matter of the more animated your house looks the more money you have to dote on it. However, aside from its one oddity the house was the winner of the ordinary award. It was colored white with worn paint and a brown trim. The yard was small and green with no flowers and the only visible window, which was rather large, was covered with green leafy plants from the inside making it nearly impossible to see inside the house. It was very plain, and the family living inside it, which there must have been given its size, was not much different. Or at least that's what Loni gathered from their brief interactions. She had only ever seen an older man mowing the lawn from time to time and on occasion the silhouette of a woman who must have been his wife as she passed by the window every so often. Loni had heard her next door neighbor Ronda tell her own mother that the poor woman must be terribly ill and near her deathbed given how long it had been since she last left the house.

Loni had first noticed the house after running by it several times. Running was one of her only hobbies and she had few routes to run on. This meant, of course, that she ran on the two main roads that cut past all of the neighboring properties, and past her neighbors almost daily. That's when she first began to notice the oddities of these neighbors in particular. She had stopped across the street from the house on a long strip of dirty path parallel to it. Her legs were achy and it was hard to find a safe place to stretch on the side of the road here. She lifted her head to see a row of three mailboxes all attached to a slab of concrete which stretched past behind them a bit. The mailboxes reminded her of a dying fire. The two on the ends were large and shiny and black while the one in the middle was a pitifully small, dirty, red thing that looked like it hadn't been touched in years. She moved toward it and propped her foot up on it, reaching down toward her toes. She lifted her head again to see feet marching towards her. When she looked up she was facing a large, bald, man, probably in his fifties, with a sour expression on his face. 

“Can I help you?” he asked in a tone that seemed to her a bit shaky, like he was trying to must up everything he had in order to be intimidating. 

“I’m sorry?” Loni responded confused.

“Can I help you?” The man repeated even more irritably than the first time.

“What are you doing with my mailbox?” He asked, crossing his arms and stopping closely in front of her. 

She turned around and saw the three mailboxes she had been stretching behind. She assumed his mailbox must have been the first of the row. If he didn't take much pride in his house he must have made up for it with pride for his mailbox.

“Are you messing with my shit?” He asked accusingly. This time Loni recognized why there was a slight tremor to his voice. He was angry. 

“Uh...Nope. Just stretching Sir.” She said as politely as she could, stepping back in order to put some space in between the two of them. Her temper began to boil as well now. She could not stand people who bullied their way through life. If she needed to she knew she could outrun this fat, grumpy, old man.

“Hm. Right.” He turned and slowly lugged back to his house. But instead of going inside he turned on his porch, leaned against the wall and stared at her as if pushing her away with his own grimaces. How annoying and rude. No wonder no one ever talks to him, She thought bitterly. So, just to spite him she did a couple more leg pulls, maintaining eye contact with him all the while, before turned and continuing on with her run. 

Loni always ran far. It was the way she relieved some of her built up stress and loosened up. She usually planned her runs so that she would be back home before dark but after her brief interaction with her not so friendly neighbor she had become distracted. By the time she had realized her mistake and began to run back home it was already getting dark. Her parents would be pissed. She ran back, flashlight in hand, which her mother made her carry in case of emergencies. She knew these roads well and wouldn't have a problem getting back home. As she trudged along the path she remembered again the dispute, if you could even call it that, she had had earlier that afternoon. As she neared the house she could feel her rage building again. She had to do something to teach that rude old man a lesson. It was dark now and she would use that to her advantage. 

She slowed her pace as she turned the corner and neared the mailboxes in order to silence her steps and breathing. She held her flashlight low in one hand and a sharp stone which she had found on the ground in the other. The lights to the house were low and the house was silent like the rest of her neighborhood had begun to do. She peaked around the trees to find that he had left the porch and gone into the house. This would be too perfect. She touched the shiny mailbox and shone her flashlight on the neat address pasted on its side. She lifted the rock to scratch the clean black paint and white numbers when she stopped a little dumbstruck. Well that was close. The mailbox she had been about to brutalize did not belong to the house of her antagonizer from earlier. The address matched a house a little farther up the street from here. She flashed her flashlight onto the other mailboxes and stood blankly for a moment as she saw the addresses. Neither of the shiny black mailboxes belonged to the house but rather the broken middle one. What could possibly be so special about this crappy mailbox that he would walk across the street to antagonize a teenage girl? She dropped the rock seeing as there was no more damage she could inflict on this mailbox that would ever surpass how horrible it already looked. It was covered in webs and, Loni worried, black widows too. She replaced the rock that had previously been in her hand with a stick swept out the middle of the mailbox. She flashed her light in now that the back was clearer and saw a single piece of folded paper. So small that if she hadn't been looking for something, anything, that would give this mailbox some value or redeeming quality she would never have seen it. She reached her stick in and swept the paper out, too scared to reach her arm in, and picked it up off the ground. She unfolded the paper and stared, holding the paper with shaky hands. Her mind blank and whirling at the same time with a dozen questions. Then. It clicked. It all made so much sense now. She ran home faster then she had run in her whole life. Her heart was flooded with relief to see her angry mother standing on the front lawn, tapping her foot impatiently.

“I said to be home before dark Alona May-” She began.

Loni pushed the note into her mother's hands cutting her off. She was breathless but managed to sighed out, “Call the police.”

Her mother looked down at the note to see a piece of a newspaper article that had been torn out: “How the community has come together in an effort to find two missing local girls, Jeanie Walker and Andrea Maldenado…” The name Jeanie was circled while Andrea was tampered out in a dark red stain that Loni thought could only have been blood.