Little Did He Know

There he goes again, sneaking through the back door of the building, as if that pock-marked bald head of his is undetectable. The mirror in the hallway foyer catches a glint of a shiny forehead attached to an elongated neck passing my door. Huge arms flapped back and forth in unison with legs protruding from tattered-styled blue jeans. The wife-beater t-shirt was ripped, torn from the three-hour-ago altercation that resulted in him being kicked out of apartment 201B for the umpteenth time this month. The police, when called, told him the usual, “Don’t come back here,” one cop would yell while the other toyed with the ammunition on his belt buckle. He reached the top of the staircase. Moving with confident ease, he stops in front of 201B. The door, left slightly ajar this time, met him with a deafening silence he had not encountered before. In the past, whenever he left, upon his return he would find 201B as it was before, with no evidence of drunken brutality. The blood stains were removed from the walls and carpet, and broken objects that were salvagable got pieced back together and returned to the places they were thrown from. It was quiet. Someone was in there alright. Just as the door was pushed opened, small frail hands clasped a bulky hard object and 201B burst into a succession of blinking white lights. Little did he know, this time, 201B would not return to normalcy.