Lenny was in prison

Lenny had been in prison for most of his adult life.  But it always hadn’t been that way. He had fleeting but fond memories of playing ball with neighbor kids, climbing trees and eating pizza with friends.  But all that went away when he was incarcerated.  His rap sheet was plenty full. Murder, rape, burglary, grand theft auto, petty theft, arson, assault, attempted assault, breaking and entering, and on and on.  It wasn’t that Lenny was an unpleasant person. To the contrary, he could hold a pleasant conversation with just about anyone. But regardless, he was in prison now.
One fine afternoon, as Lenny was doing push-ups in his 8 x 8 cell, he heard a rumor.  His bunk mate, Guido, told him that someone told him that they were all going to receive a pardon.  Like every single person in the prison. Lenny told him he was full of shit. “Whatever,” Guido said, “I know what i heard and what I heard was a universal full pardon, for everyone.”
Immediately following their enlightening conversation, yelling was heard outside.  Not the angry type of yelling that is commonly heard in the prison yard, but an excited, joyous yelling. Lenny pulled himself up on window bars and peeked over the edge.  He saw the main gate wide open and a handful of people simply walking out. Lenny turned around to say something to Guido, but Guido was nowhere to be seen.  Lenny scratched his head.
Lenny sat on the edge of his bed for awhile, looking at the now open cell door.  Something wasn't adding up.  How could someone simply pardon all of these people and simply let them out?  “Well, I guess I don’t have to understand it.  The cell door is open, there are no guards to be seen and Guido is long gone.  What have I got to lose?”  So Lenny stood up and walked out of his cell. 
His walk was not a long one, but it was awkward.  He passed innumerable cells, many empty, but many, as well, were still occupied by their usual inhabitants.  Many of them very much like Lenny.  Large, foul mouthed, tattooed and violent.  Every so often, one of these men would follow Lenny down the corridor. Some stopped partway down, only to occupy another cell.  But by the time Lenny made it outside, there were a small number of other former prisoners in his company.  They paused, a couple looked back inside, but after a deep breath, they continued their exodus. As they passed out into the open, across the yard, toward the gate, one could sense a tension across all of them.  The prospect of being shot in the back for “trying” to escape was not a pleasant thought for any of them. 
In passing through the final outer gate, Lenny felt a rush of pure joy.  He was free.  The men all scattered in different directions, but Lenny kept going straight forward.  The prison was due south of town and Lenny wanted to head towards home. As he crested the small hill, just north of the prison, he came upon a short, fat, balding man, standing by a folding table.  The man smiled at Lenny and handed him a full sheet of paper with the number “47” in large print.  Additionally handing Lenny a safety pin, he said, “You’re going to want to pin that number to your shirt.  And take a right at the next hill, head east.”  He smiled again and looked off toward the prison.  Lenny paused for a minute and then continued on his way, pinning the number to his shirt as he walked.
Lenny did as he was told and taking a right at the next hill, he could see another town, off in the distance.  A few yards into his path to the east, Lenny came across three former prison mates, playing on swings just off the path.  “Uh,” Lenny started to say, but not knowing what to say next, he stopped himself and turning his attention back to the path, continued.  He just reached the top of a small hill when he paused and looked back.  He could see others, who had come out of the prison talking to the small, bald man.  Others, ahead of them, had turned left instead of right and were disappearing off to the west.  From his vantage point, Lenny could see nothing but wasteland and emptiness in the direction they were heading.  Feeling winded, Lenny sat on a large rock at the edge of the path.  A few minutes into his rest, two other men came upon him and joined his rest.  They spoke briefly of the path of former prison life, of the beautiful view and a bit about the town that lay ahead.  The talk of town really didn’t amount to much, as none of them really knew anything about it.
They stood from their rest and continued on their way, east.

Impact

    They say he died upon impact.  It was a thousand foot fall and the surface upon which to land was marble.  He didn’t have a chance.  When he made the choice to jump off that cliff, he had the highest hopes, the grandest aspirations, the most positive assessment of the possibilities, but apparently, it was all for naught.  When he jumped off that cliff, the end result was inevitable, regardless of how positive a mindset he was able to manufacture.
    The spine was clearly broken, the skull, multiple fractures. Both femurs, both clavicles and every single rib.  The eyeballs had partially dislodged from their sockets and blood was seeping from both ears.  He was not in good shape.  Yet somehow, he stood.  The time lapse from the moment of impact to the rising to his feet, was exactly 3.5 seconds.  The one eyewitness was, possibly, scarred for life, and it was all his fault.  This one who jumped from the cliff and nearly splattered on the marble palette was completely to blame.  Some could refer to genetics, some could point to a lifetime of choices, decisions and influence. But regardless of it all, the one eyewitness was scarred.
    He rose to his feet, rubbed the back of his neck and said, “Ow”.  That was all, “Ow”.  The one eyewitness was sobbing uncontrollably, shaking uncontrollably and uttering strange and foreign words, though only possessing the vocabulary of one language.  The next eleven years was a decade plus one of sideways glances, questions, suspicions and further sideways glances.  But he had no answers, he could give no explanation. He had learned to control his nervous system, all of his systems, in fact.  Yet here it all was, out in the open. He had leapt from the cliff and now would spend the rest of his days, walking, talking, breathing and interacting (at least on a minimal level), completely broken.

Fat

     The children were fat. Not chubby, portly or stout, but fat. Mrs. Grimm stood in front of the classroom, the primary point of attention to twenty two sets of close set beady eyes, pin pricks in flaccid faces, strangely resembling marshmallows.  Little things started to become more noticeable, as each day passed for Mrs. Grimm, teacher of the fourth grade at Portman Elementary School. The increasing number of glassy eyes.  The occasional drool from the corner of a mouth.  The snort following a somewhat too long of laugh.
     The nagging suspicion finally grew to a screeching crescendo one cold fall afternoon, immediately after school.  Mrs. Grimm had packed her handbag and was exiting the building, walking into the drizzle of the ever graying sky.  As the door closed behind her, she was startled to find one of the Nubbins children, one of seventeen, if her count was right. It was the fifth youngest, but it was hard to tell, for they mostly looked alike, morbidly obese with coarse, red hair.  Little Lucy Nubbins was standing in the rain, facing the door and looking at Mrs. Grimm with an odd smile upon her fat lips.  "Oh, Lucy," Mrs. Grimm said with a start, "you surprised me.  What are you doing out here?"  Little Lucy Nubbins said nothing, but only held out her fat little, 8 year old hand.  Mrs. Grimm leaned in, to try to see what it was that Lucy held.  "Oh, Lucy, it's a mouse," Mrs. Grimm said with another start.  She realized, obviously too late, that the mouse was dead.  Lucy rubbed the small thing with her left thumb.
     Mrs. Grimm climbed into her car and looking in her rear view mirror, could only stare at the little girl, ponderously, as she simply stood and stroked her mouse.  Pulling out of the parking lot, Mrs. Grimm headed north, for about sixteen blocks, when she passed the Nubbins home and, as an automatic response to her previous interaction with Lucy Nubbins, observed the homestead.  And oddly, though coming as no surprise, Mrs. Grimm noticed Mr. Nubbins standing in the front yard, wearing nothing but his boxers and swinging a fly swatter at, Mrs. Grimm surmised, a particularly annoying fly, which from her vantage point, could not be seen.  Mr. Nubbins paused for a moment, waved at Mrs. Grimm and then continued his frantic and spastic attempts at Musca domestica assault.
    It was that evening, at the schools annual "Coffee and Chat" in the school cafeteria when the suspicions, the concerns and the overall concern came to a head.  Forty-seven sets of parents with a large herd of unruly, drooling children converged on the cafeteria, all looking for free cookies.  Every teacher, with the exception of Mr. Hausenpheffer, the science teacher, who was home sick with the flu, stood smiling as the invasion began. As Mrs. Grimm traversed the mind numbing landscape of parents, smiling and interacting, she could feel her IQ shrinking, or at least giving the impression of shrinking, like an ice cube on the beach.  After a few minutes of immersion in a conversational pool of flatulence and professional wrestling, Mrs. Grimm made the horrifying observation that every single parent in that room was morbidly obese, painfully obtuse and overall dim witted.
    That evening, after the social, Mrs. Grimm packed her suitcase, grabbed her copy of "Common Sense" by Thomas Paine, and bought a one way plane ticket to Seattle. Her class, the next morning, sat for forty-minutes before they realized they had no teacher.

***EXCITING NEWS***

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