Gloves

Alan

There was no white to be seen. The year’s end had reluctantly returned but refused to commit. The leaves rustled on the yellow grass. Elms and oaks, stripped bare from the wind, cast dark black shadowy streaks across the old paint-chipped houses. Lights were strung up, but the incessant wind had ruined the orderly lines. They were left hanging across the corners of houses clutching at gutters and windowsills. Decorations swirled up antennas, wreaths hung on doors and the guard rails glittered with foggy Christmas lights weathered dim from years of exposure. Perched in the largest elm, a barn owl was considering an old man on a porch.

Alan Bennett sat languid in his lawn chair on his decaying porch with a cold beer in his wrinkled hand, eight more underneath him. He would have preferred the beer to be warm but had left it on the porch from the previous night. His vacant eyes stared at nothing in particular as he took in another year’s end without a word. There was no reason to talk, no one to talk to. A kid rode past on a red bicycle bundled up in hat and scarf, his hands white with knuckles as red as the handle bars. He was pedaling fast with his head down to avoid the wind.

Alan wondered dimly why the kid wasn’t wearing gloves but his thoughts drifted to the time when he had first taught his son how to ride a bike, nearly 40 years ago. The spring clouds had dropped enough rain for the entire country but the jealous summer sun tried its best to take it all back. Record breaking heat waves had set everyone in fragile moods. Alan’s son had gone to the fridge around noon and opened the door to try and cool off. The heat was too much and the freezer couldn’t handle it. It died and all of the food in the freezer and the fridge spoiled in a few short hours. Alan had yelled. He yelled and beat his son, then yelled some more. The next day he decided to mend the situation by teaching him how to ride a bike. It didn’t go well.

He would never win the father-of-the-year award, but not for lack of trying. He had always tried to do things with his son but would inevitably lose his temper over something small. His son was young and seemed to like him, but Alan struggled to connect with him. He was only twenty-nine when his temper forced his wife to leave him and take their eight-year-old son with her. Alan wasn’t too upset, he actually thought it was for the best. He has been alone since.

Alan looks up and the boy who wasn’t wearing any gloves is gone. The sun is starting to set and there’s an owl criticizing him from the large elm tree, as if he was there that summer 40 years ago. Tonight, friends will party and loved ones will kiss each other at midnight. A car drives by. It has a family inside. Alan takes out another beer and cracks the top, watching the leaves dance behind the car and silently agreeing with the owl.

Freda

Freda was an inflexible woman. Her son, Erik, was all she had left in this new world. Otto, her deceased husband, had known English and had taken care of everything for her. She had no interest in learning the language. German was all she knew and all she needed, Otto would provide everything else. The ten years after Otto’s death pushed Freda even more into seclusion. She couldn’t shop, she couldn’t work. Erik would come by once a week with groceries. He would take care of the house when things needed fixing and mow the lawn in the summertime.

It was about dinner time, Erik wasn’t visiting tonight for the New Year. He had last year. Freda was ready for her cigarette already but was a creature of habit. She would wait for after dinner as she always did. She went to the fridge and grabbed the pheasant Erik had brought the day before yesterday. She boiled water and pulled the spices out of the cabinet. The vegetables needed to be cut, she got to work.

She had nothing left to live for. She ate to live and lived to cook. It was an arduous cycle. Erik had stopped talking when he came to visit. He brought in the groceries, asked in his first language if anything needed fixing, inspected the exterior of the house, and left. Freda never expected more. Otto was the bridge between her and her son, that bridge came crashing down ten years ago when the blood clot caused hemorrhaging in his brain. The subsequent trip to the hospital was the last time Freda had left her home. Otto was dead before they made it. They fired questions at her but she couldn’t understand. Erik was little help. He had already started closing the door to the rest of the world.

It was Otto’s idea to move to America. He was an energetic fool.

Freda finishes cutting the vegetables and looks out the window. She sees a boy riding his bike. He looks scared and he’s not wearing gloves. She thinks an ill thought or two about parents who let their kids out in the cold without wearing gloves before she begins to put the vegetables on the stove.

Dylan

Dylan put on his black scarf and white hat and started running out the door.

“Gloves!” yelled his mother from the kitchen. She was preparing appetizers for the party that night. All her friends would be there, but her friends were the classy type with no children, which meant no friends for him. He didn’t feel like being around when they arrived.

“But I can’t hold my bike handles with those stupid things!”

“You’ll wear your gloves or you won’t go outside.”

“Fine! Whatever!” Dylan retorted as he grabbed his gloves and ran out the front door, just able to hear his mother shout something about a helmet. He was far enough out the door to pretend he never heard her. He grabbed his helmet and tossed it behind the hedges, just in case she was in that kind of mood tonight.

He shoved his absurdly large gloves in his coat pockets, hopped on his bike and rode toward the abandoned farmhouse down the street. He had set up a fort in the attic a few years ago. The spiders had deserted their corners, leaving their wispy homes behind. The house seemed to breathe as the floorboards creaked even in the slightest breeze. Dylan had brought a few old blankets to make it more comfortable and over the last eight months had decorated the walls by hanging stolen possessions. These were all items he had found while exploring other people’s homes—nothing too valuable, more like trophies.

As soon as he arrived, he climbed to the attic and threw his stupid gloves in the corner. A large barn owl abruptly flew through the broken circle window at the far end of the attic that overlooked the neighborhood. Not a lot happened in his neighborhood. He would mostly watch Mr. Bennett drink beer on his porch. Occasionally, the old man would go inside and leave a few beers sitting there until morning. Dylan would leave his fort, sneak a beer or two from Mr. Bennett’s porch, and bring them back to the attic.

Mrs. Kohler, the foreign widow who lived next door to Mr. Bennett, was useful as well. Where the old man provided Dylan with beer, the old widow supplied him with cigarettes. She had an old cigarette box where she stored them. She would open her front door once after breakfast and once after dinner to shuffle out and smoke half a cigarette—one cigarette a day, every day, for as long as he could remember. Besides that, she was never seen outside her home. Her groceries were delivered to her by a young man who also mowed her lawn. The neighbors speculated that it was her son, but no one knew for sure. They weren’t even sure if she spoke English.

Dylan didn’t care though. She provided him with cigarettes, Mr. Bennett provided the beer. Drinking and smoking alone was all he could do for fun in a neighborhood without kids his age. It was a bad habit that would stay with him for the rest of his life. As he watched Mr. Bennett shuffle out onto his porch looking hungover and sitting back in his chair to continue drinking for the day, Dylan heard a door open downstairs. He leaves his gloves in the corner of the attic and quietly walks down the stairs to investigate.

The murder

The door to the abandoned farmhouse had been stolen about a decade ago. No one remembers when it went missing. The wind passed the caution tape and spread dead leaves across the once white carpet. A path through the leaves lead to the stairs leading to the attic. An observant eye would notice that someone frequented the attic, but the man in the black jacket with black gloves wasn’t that observant. He considered the abandoned house a safe place to conduct his work. His current job was sitting in the other room tied to a chair, blindfolded and gagged. The man in the black jacket with black gloves was in the kitchen, cleaning his pistol. He had extracted a satisfying amount of information from the job in the other room and considered this stage complete.

The man in the black jacket with black gloves finished cleaning his gun, pulled the silencer out of his jacket pocket and walked toward the other room. He opened the door, stepped in, closed the door, and twisted the silencer onto his pistol. The job was pleading with his swollen, bloody eyes. The man in the black jacket with black gloves shut the door behind him, lifted the pistol and pulled the trigger. That was the easy part. The job was far from finished though. The next part was why he was chosen for the job. You go to jail for murder, but only if you're caught. The cleanup is the most important part and the man in the black jacket with black gloves was about to start when he heard the floor creak.

He kept still for a moment, straining his ears for more information. He heard nothing. “Just the wind,” he muttered to himself.

Then he heard the door open. He spun around and saw a boy in a white hat and a black scarf staring at him. This made things difficult but nothing he couldn’t handle. He pointed his pistol at the boy but was too slow. The kid realized what had just happened and, not wanting to stick around, vanished down the hallway and ran out the front door.

“Shit.” The man in the black jacket with black gloves took out his cell phone and made a call.

Scott

Last year’s work party wasn’t much to boast about. Scott had mixed a shot of orange juice with half a bottle of whiskey and returned to his usual ways. His usual ways weren’t much to boast about either. This year’s was going to be different though. Everything was different. Almost everything was different. His wife left him. His two kids left with his wife. He got a “promotion” at work, which just meant he was off the floor and had to sit in an office chair all day instead of talking to customers. He gained at least 50 pounds in this new role. He picked up smoking at a local bar where he knew the bartender by name. He grew a mustache. He was a new man. But he kept drinking. That never changed. But he was a new man.

He reached for the remote, turned off the television and finished off the dregs of his flask. He grabbed for the bottle to refill it but his fingers slipped and sent it pirouetting to the floor, splashing its contents on the carpet, adding to previous stains. A few sounds managed to escape his lips concerning the spilled alcohol but he didn’t care enough to form them into words. There was still enough in the bottle to fill his flask and he made a mental note to pick more up on the way home.

With a full flask in his shirt pocket, he grabbed his cigarettes and walked out onto the front porch. There was a frigid chill in the air but for whatever reason, winter had yet to show its white face. Scott looked over to the old man’s house and saw him sitting in his chair looking like Death hungover. He chuckled at the old man’s fortune, considering himself better off, and sparked his lighter. It took a few tries and some shaking, but he managed to burn the tobacco while keeping his balance and was now coughing out his first toxic drag as a car with a family passed by.

He always hated the first drag. He felt as though he were sucking in the gas fumes from the lighter and considered himself smarter than all the other smokers out there for realizing it. Maybe it was the fumes that caused cancer. He was probably the only person in the world astute enough to figure that out. He should have become a doctor or something. It’s not like you could avoid the first drag though, so he usually made sure to cough it all out of his lungs so it wouldn’t cause cancer. He looked over to see if Frau Neighbor was outside smoking as well but it was too early. She only ever came out after supper time. What a weird woman. He could see her cooking in the kitchen.

The party was going to start soon and Scott wasn’t going to be late. He was looking forward to showing everyone how much better he was compared to last year. He even ironed his shirt and trimmed his ever-growing mustache.

The alcohol was relaxing him now—smoking always sped that process along. In his car, he scratched his keys around until they found the ignition and the engine whirred. He put the car in reverse and backed out with confidence. There was a thud, then a series of bumps. He must have run over the trash can again.

He gets out and immediately steps on a bike wheel. Who the hell leaves a bike behind a car? He tries to pull the bike out but it’s stuck so he bends down to examine it. Then he sees the hand. It’s a small hand. It’s not moving. He touches it and it's cold. It still doesn’t move. He shakes it. It still doesn’t move. He pulls himself up, panicking. He looks around and sees the family car down the street at the stop sign by the old farmhouse. They turn left and disappear. Mr. Bennett's eyes follow the car, lost in thought. A man in a black jacket with black gloves is staring from the street corner, he turns around and walks the other way, talking on his cell phone. A barn owl hoots in the large elm tree and suddenly flies away towards the abandoned farmhouse and perches itself in the broken circle window.