Paper Boy

The paper boy hums merrily as he tosses rolled up tubes bearing the news casually, with a slight flick to his wrist, toward doors. He doesn’t notice the broken window at 11-B, simply throws the newspaper barely breaking stride and goes on, doing his job.

And so, he doesn’t know, inside the house is an oaf with an ax. A hot rash covers his sweaty forehead, dots his meaty cheeks and thick neck, continues its irritating spread all over his hairy chest and back. The oaf does not know that the coarse burlap cloth he’s fashioned a shirt out of is its cause. All he knows is this: he vies for the attention of the charming Miss Molly Parker, and he’s here to claim it for himself.

Watching her nibble on veal by candlelight earlier that night had been too much for his fragile ego; she’d been sitting across from one Right Honorable Bartholomew Benson in a slip of red silk, laughing gaily at something the Honorable Mister B. B had uttered. It was the laughter that did it, for Miss Parker had never once laughed at anything the oaf said. Ever. To clarify, the charming young woman was ignorant of the oaf and his affection. Until the moment she found him in her house, shattered glass all around him, she’d been oblivious to his existence.

The paper boy knows nothing of these things. Humming merrily, he turns the corner, ready to toss more newspapers on a new street.