MY GARDEN THAT GROWS BONES

Warning: some violence

 I remember when I was the self appointed almighty protector of my neighborhood. I also remember always thinking and being aware that it was a matter of time before I got caught doing what I believed I had to do, to protect my neighborhood. 

      Hell my neighbors couldn't just keep coming up missing or dead and me not becoming one of the suspects. But I didn't care because I knew that even if a person burned down their own house and left a can of gas in the middle of the living room, the people investigating would still have to prove who did it. In this case I thought ,they would need a search warrant, a shovel and the willingness to destroy a perfectly planted, well groomed ,loved and cared for garden. I'm sure you've guessed it , I'm talking about... my garden that grows bones. 

      My house was the first one built in the neighborhood and that's one of the reasons I brought it . In my mind it made me the one with the right to determine who stayed there and who had to go. It didn't take much time for a retired man like me, who was home all the time , spending a lot of time looking out the window , to figure out who was worthy to also love and live in my world of Pelham Bay Court. In case you are wondering, my rules and ideas of a perfect community weren't based entirely on a set of HomeOwners Association Bi-laws . They were based mostly on the ones I had developed and expected others to follow. The ones I put into my personal rulebook. 

      Now you may be saying to yourself that this man is not right. He sounds like he's off his rocker. He must be that guy you find in every neighborhood, that crazy old man that doesn't like anything. Well that's not completely true and not entirely false either. I'm a little old yes but I still liked a lot of things and I'm certainly not still crazy . As a matter of fact I could prove that at any time because In my safe , were my discharge papers from the Quantum Asylum ForThe Insane. I know they're still good because I don't think they become no good, simply because somebody changed the name of the place to The Quantum Mental Institution, which I assumed was for political correctness and not because the patients didn't like the name.

      If I recall ,the first time I had to enforce my rules for the good of my wholesome neighborhood , it was in 09' and it involved a couple that lived only two houses down from me. What a noisy couple and they were probably only in their sixties, a few years younger than me but that didn't stop them from partying at their house as though that was going to get them back their youth or maybe at least convince themselves that they had stopped Father Time. I guess this bothered me because I had already convinced myself that I was the Keeper of things that was and should be. 

     So by the time the Murrays had moved in, my mind was already in standby enforcement mode and that wasn't going to be good for the Murrays. Especially after I had complained to them several times to no avail about the loud music, fights and their freckled faced grandchild, who raced his car up and down the street with no damn muffler, who I asked myself, drives a car with no muffler. Well I assume you most likely have guessed something right again ,that this was what started... my garden that grows bones. 

      One day I had had enough. It was time to enforce my rules and as an experienced TV watcher which was a good way to learn things, I had a good idea of how I was going to do it and most important, how I was going to get into the Murray's house without being detected. No alarms, no problems ... just death. 

      I watched the Murray's leave on that fateful Saturday night at around 9pm . I remember it going though my head at the time, that they were probably some kind of swingers. I found that funny and laughed to myself as I scooted though the two backyards between us. One backyard belonging to my traveling businessman neighbor and the other to the quiet 84 year old couple next door to me , who would be performing a well timed sleeping session by 10pm I waited behind a bush located next to the Murray's garage which allowed me to be well positioned to go right in when they opened it, to pull their car in. It all turned out to be easy, maybe too easy. If it had been harder maybe that would have scared me and I might not have gone on to later murder two other people.

      I had to wait about three hours and a half until they pulled back into their garage. I bent down and hurried into the garage slipping in behind their second car that was parked on the side of the garage where thevinside door that led into the house was . I then ran up on Larry Murray and hit him hard with a crowbar. That was all it took and when Mrs Murray who had actually entered the house came back to the door , she met her end after I took a page from my grandmother's book of life that read.."Don't spare the rod" . I hit her just as hard as I had hit Larry. Both hits would have been considered knock outs in a boxing ring. In this case, they were just causes of death. 

      I picked up Larry who was about 120 pounds and brought him to my yard , then went back and grabbed his wife who was even lighter. You're probably asking yourself , why the hell would he bother taking the bodies. Well my answer if you had a chance to ask me would most likely have been, as I smiled at you , "I don't know, I guess maybe I'm still crazy". 

      The police investigated and questioned many people and started believing it was an abduction and after awhile, it was just a cold case of possible murder. I found out a short time later after the police stopped coming around, that the Murray's had moved to Pelhem Bay Court because for a long time they had been receiving threats from person or persons unknown at their previous address. I never found out why that had happened to them but it was good that it did start to look like somebody had caught up with them. The cops who were probably tired of investigating this going nowhere case, appeared to be more than happy to accept that and moved on to whatever their next case was. That had worked out good and things were quiet again on my watch, in my neighborhood of Pelham Bay Court . 

      That was until the incident at the pool which came about a year and a half later. This problem had lived not far from my house and came in the form of a man named Jake Tanner, who called himself, The Cul-De-Sac Beach Bum and Yeah he did live in a cul-de-sac. 

      Over the years I had grown to love the community pool and would often go there to just sit back and get some sunshine as I read a book. I would also do some peaking at a few of the wonderful swimming and tanning mothers. It was also where I would sometimes see Jake prancing around seemingly guiding through the air with the body I never had and getting the attention I never got. I wasn't jealous at all but I must say his behavior and mannerisms didn't quite help him with the decision I eventually made. Especially since Jake didn't just prance around , he was one nasty son of a gun and one day he made the mistake of being Mr Nasty right in front of me, a now experienced killer. 

      That day Jake had been close enough to me for me to hear him ask for a telephone number and get rejected. That had brought a smile to my face as I watched him not take it that well. Which was kind of odd for a man I thought should have had at least 10 women on standby. So I was a little shocked when I saw him kick over the ladies table and began cursing her out. I guess it was just his nasty nature.

      It all had lasted a good ten minutes before the lady got up and ran, which made me feel a little ashamed because I knew that years back, I would have jumped up and laid him flat out, but I knew I wasn't physically that man anymore and age didn't make me a fool. So I decided that this was something that must and will be taken care of at a later date. Even though no one was hurt, it didn't mean no one was going to get hurt.

      Jake had one of those nice soft top jeeps that I often wondered whenever I saw one ,how easy it would be to cut one open. In this case, cut it open , hide in the back , then pop up and slice Jake's neck.. I was going to find that out. Jake always parked his jeep in his driveway and drove it every friday night at around 8:30pm. I figured a guy like him with that build and attitude was probably a bouncer somewhere. 

      One Friday I did find out about that soft top, it was soft and easy to cut . I cut it , got in and waited for my chance. Jake eventually got in and started driving as I sat crouching my somewhat old bones in the back,just waiting. I got lucky when I heard him on his cell telling someone that he would call them right back because he had to find a place to pull over and take a piss. We hadn't driven far when he stopped the car and ended up peeing on himself as his neck was being cut with my new discount store scalpel. He never had a chance, never fought and went out quick. If he had been standing up he would have gone down like a freshly cut big tree waiting for someone to yell "Timber". 

      Even though I had this thing with my garden, I knew even if we didn't drive far that there would be no way I was going to be able to get a six foot three man back to my house. At least not in one piece. I was going to be on foot and was already going to be ducking and dodging through the streets to get back. So of course I had come prepared with my nice name brand leather bag, that contained a thick plastic bag and a saw. Hell I didn't need the whole body. A leg was good enough to fertilize and show love to ...my garden that grows bones. 

      Two missing and a one legged man turning up dead from the same neighborhood was some what odd but like I said earlier , you still have to prove these things and besides who would ever suspect that I was the bad guy. Hell even in my mind I wasn't doing anything wrong as I kept Pelham Bay Court a nice place to live for the old and young. Nobody innocent got hurt so there was no harm and in my mind ,no foul. 

      To me, the fact that things stayed quiet for awhile, justified my actions and no further reasons came up for me to hurt anybody, for the good of our community. Who could ask for anything better than peace and harmony for all.

      It wasn't until the guy that worked for the Home Owners Association's management company came around harassing me for the third time within a week, that I felt the need to again take action. He needled me and neighbors over and over about the molding on sidings and the paint on shutters. Damn it! He had pisseds me off because it was still March and sometimes still cold . He wasn't giving me or my dear neighbors a chance to get it done. Spring wasn't even here so he was just being a bastard just because he could. I know your probably saying to yourself that this happens in a lot of places and you might even be wondering why I would think this was a good reason to murder another person. Well my answer this time would be the old ...HE MADE ME DO IT ! .      

     It was all that harassing and then him making the fatal mistake of tempting me, by showing up and asking me if he could come in and read me the community Bi-Laws . He said he wanted to do that because he believed that I was having problems with reading and comprehension. 

      The only problem was that it turned out that we both made mistakes. My mistake was of the critical nature. I let a hell of a lot of people see him go into my house and in the end, it turned out that they just didn't have the same ideas, of what kind of methods were good to use, to maintain a good neighborhood. The neighbors just ended up being just a bunch of tattle tellers who got lucky that I didn't get a chance to teach tattle teller lessons. 

      Mr Harris was the name he gave when he sat at my table, like he really thought he was welcome. He read and talked in a manner that reminded me of Nasty Jake. That's what sealed his fate. So when he said no to some of my wonderful smelling flavored hot tea that had brewed in a well made tea pot, that was it. I slammed that tea pot across his head with a vengeance. He turned out to be a man that not only talked loud, but screamed loud. After a couple of whacks on the head he got quiet. As quiet as a neighborhood should always be.

      I didn't waste time but I didnfinished my cup of tea and then I got my saw out and started cutting. This I thought, was going to be extra good for the garden, seeing that he was extra nasty . I cut him in half right there on the kitchen floor, then dragged him out to the garden where I had already had a nice size hole dug. My mama, who I had never seen again after the last time I saw them take her to a hospital kicking and screaming while dressed in a white jacket, had told me something I had still remembered. She said that there was nothing wrong with always being ready for the unexpected because it would be unexpected.

      I didn't waste time putting on gloves. I just pushed him in the hole and then threw dirt on him with my hands and shovel. Then I patted the dirt down for good measure. No one would have ever guessed the truth about my garden and looking back now, I figure if it wasn't for several facts or things happening I wouldn't have gotten caught.  

      The first thing was a sharp eyed cop showing up and seeing the dirt on my hands a few minutes after I had patted Mr. Harris in. This of course prompted deserved suspicion since my neighbors had already apparently told him that they had seen Mr Harris go in and later heard screams. The fact that Mr Harris was nowhere in sight and no one had seen him leave didn't help either. Especially when coupled with the fact that his car was still parked in my driveway. 

      Like I said, If it wasn't for all that, they wouldn't have gotten that search warrant and I wouldn't have gotten caught. I would still be looking out for the old neighborhood. I would have never thought that I would have ever ended up back here again, in this padded cell , that's so so far away from ...my garden that grows bones.