My friend Judy's dad died last Wednesday. They discovered an inoperable brain tumor in mid August. The familiy knew he didn't have long to live, but I think they thought he would last until early next year. Brain tumors are like that; quick and painless. Judy's dad died in his sleep.

My ex mother-in-law, whom I dearly loved, died like that. Brain tumor diagnosis one day and three months later she was gone. Even the doctors at Stanford couldn't do a thing for her. Poor Lou.

She asked my ex-husband about me, you know. Asked my ex in her last dying days, about me and about how I was. Lou even told me ex how much she loved me. She was a great mom-in-law. I was really touched by her gesture, since I hadn't seen in her in five years.

The last time I saw Judy's dad, we were in Vermont and watching Monday Night football. He was a big New England Patriots fan and was lamenting about his team. He had gone up the day before to Canada to buy Molson beer and we were drinking beer, talking about football and watching the game. He was such a sweet man. Sort of high handed in his own way, but then I think all old dads are high handed. And boy did he love his Big Band music, the music of his youth Judy said.

Losing a parent is so hard, even though you're expecting them to die. My dad was in the hospital for two years before he finally moved on. Towards the end, I couldn't even go and see him. He was wasting away to nothing, paralyzed from the waist down and in pain, and just getting sicker and more depressed as the two years wore on. My family was relieved when he finally left since he was depressed and in pain, but it was still hard, very hard.

My friend Patti, from my writing group, is into writing flash fiction. I had to write one page story for a writing class I was in during the Fall 2000, so I think this qualifies as flash fiction.

Flash Fiction – Maggie and The Crying Freeman

It's late she thought, looking at her watch, almost midnight. Maggie stared at her notes again to see if there was anything she might have overlooked. Five killings were done assassin style. The victims were all males, between the ages of 30 and 50, found in dumpsters in the Mission district in San Francisco with their hands and feet tied and a note pinned to their chest which read, "The people have spoken and made their judgment. The accused has been punished in the manner befitting the crime". The note was signed "The Crying Freeman" and under the signature the killer had drawn tears as if he was sorry for the killing. Each victim was shot in the head at close range from behind. Each man had been wearing an expensive suit, had carried a briefcase, laptop, PDA and a cellphone. Each had held a top position at their respective dot com companies and they all lived in the mission.

Other than that, there was no apparent connection between each man. Maggie put her pen down and stared out of her hotel window gazing at the lights of the city flickering in the darkness. The Crying Freeman was a comic book character she’d found out. However, the murders were nothing like the comic books. If this was a copycat murder, she mused, then the assassin would use the same killing metho, but he didn't. Maggie leaned her head back and closed her eyes and thought about all the murders she had helped solved over her twenty-five year career as private investigator; not one resembled this case. She thought about the young kid she had interviewed at the comic book store. The killer must be a regular at the comic bookstore she thought and wrote a note to herself to question the employees again.

Suddenly there was a loud knock at the door. Maggie started and looked at the clock wondering who it could be at this late hour. She stood up, went over to her bag on the bed, and got out her gun. She looked through the chambers making sure it was loaded and then put the gun in the holster at her side. She put her jacket on and then went to the door and opened it.

"Maggie, Hi, I’m Oscar, the guy you interviewed today at Al's Comic Books."

"Oh yeah, hi, how are you?" Maggie wondered why he was here.

"Good. Listen, I know it's late, but you told me to come by your hotel if I remember anything and I have. Can I come in?" Maggie looked at the kid again. He wasn't a kid actually, she thought and guessed his age to about late 20's. There was something very sweet and eager about him.

"Sure come in" she said, "I was just go over my notes again." Maggie closed the door, undid the chain, opened the door again and gestured for Oscar to come in. She saw the kid's eyes look around the room and widen as he walked in. Her room was a big suite with a desk and a living room.

"Why don't we sit on the couch and you can tell me what you remembered", Maggie said walking over to the sofa and noticed out of the corner of her eye, Oscar fumbling for something in his jacket. She turned around and put her hand on her gun under her jacket, watching him. All of a sudden, the hair on her neck started rising. She caught a brief glimpse of the gun in his hand.

Maggie pulled her own gun out and yelled, "Drop it", cocking her gun. Oscar started for a second but didn't drop his gun.

"I said drop the gun or I'll shoot", Maggie yelled. Oscar stared at her and the gun. Maggie saw a tears roll down Oscar's cheek and thought to herself that he wasn't prepared for her having a gun and that she had caught him off guard.

"Why are you doing this?" Maggie asked, "Who the hell are you?" There was a long silence in the room.

"I said, who the hell are you.”

"I am the Crying Freeman," he said simply. Oscar lifted his gun and before Maggie could shoot, he shot himself in the mouth.

Dropping her hands to her side, Maggie wiped her brow. She felt her hands clammy with sweat and noticed that her blouse was also wet. She saw a small book that must have fallen out of his jacket. Maggie reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out the rubber gloves she always carried with her, and put them on. Then she bent down, picked up the book, and flipped through the pages. There was a page for each victim, with their names, what comic books they bought, where they worked, where they lived, how they looked. They were all comic book shop customers she thought, that's the connection.

She saw another page. It read, "I am the Crying Freeman. It is my duty to rid San Francisco of those people who are responsible for its demise. I have been ordered to kill all those work in dot com companies." Maggie shook her head, went over to the phone called the police.

God, all this talk about anthrax. Who knows what to believe? I feel like I'm listening to the Y2K doomsayers again and Y2K never happend. People are so paranoid right now, even the experts. They're saying that these early cases of anthrax are just test cases and that we can expect a mass attack. Why do they do this? It's scary!!! They're talking about spraying biological and chemical weapons on money, on food, in our water supply, etc.

Whoever is doing this, I think they are very serious. But I believe in karma and it's really, really bad karma what they're doing and I think karma will take care of these people down the road. But until down the road comes, I'm afraid of what will happen to me, to my family and friends and to my country.

I honestly don't know what to believe. I'm listening to a guy who's scaring me about biological and chemical weapons and in the same breath, he's hawking his book about biological terror for $20. There's something not right about that somehow.

Here's a first draft, mistakes and all, of my "Crazy Eddie" story. I have 14 handwritten pages more of this story but they're not typed up yet.

I came here to his barren place, to shed any sense of normalcy I had left. That’s what happens I’ve read, when you’re in a traumatic event, they say you lose any sense of your life, your routine. And since I’m the kind of person, who likes to take things to their logical conclusion, although in this case, it seems, their logical extreme, I packed up, put all my stuff in storage, bought a camper and came here. I like the dessert, I always have. There is no one out here but sand, cactus and nocturnal animals, especially in the summer when the temperature goes up over a 100 degrees. The guy at the ranger station gave me a strange look when I bought my camping permit and warned me about the heat of the dessert. I smiled and told him I grew up in this area and I liked the heat. He smiled and shook his head and handed over the permit. He was right about the heat though. It is hot here. Most times I stay in my camper and it feels like I’m in an oven and I’m roasting. I sit with the window open and fan myself. Some days I just have to sit there and not move, because even fanning myself makes me sweat. At night it gets so cold and then I feel like I’m sitting in an icebox. I try not to turn on the heat or any use any electricity so I can conserve my energy supplies. The less supplies I use, the less frequently I have to go into town for supplies. I am so into my own isolation I don’t even like seeing or hearing other people. Every night I lie in my bed with all my blankets on and wearing every single piece of clothing I own and still I’m cold. It’s hard to sleep when you’re cold. Not that it matters, I can’t sleep anyway so I don’t really mind. I’m afraid to sleep. Every time I doze off the memories start – the sounds, the smells – they call, come back and I have to relive the whole thing again, like it wasn’t bad enough the first time. I can still see him lying there – smell the liquor that seemed to always be oozing out of his pores. He always smelled like stale cigarettes and cheap booze, that sickening stench you smell when you first walk into bars. He was lying there in that unnatural position, all sprawled on the floor, spread eagle, lying in his own pool of blood. God only knows how long he was in that position. I didn’t come home that night till really late and that’s how I found him. I don’t remember much after that. I was told by the cops that my next door neighbor called them when she heard me screaming over and over again. When they got there fifteen minutes later, I was still screaming. They tried to get me to stop but I wouldn’t. Finally one of them slapped me real hard and only then did I stop screaming. Then they said I fainted from the shock. Next thing I know I’m sitting in a hospital bed and it’s three days later. The cops came and interviewed me later and asked me if I remembered anything. I told them what I saw when I came in. Then they asked me if I knew about my boyfriend’s gambling debts and I said I knew he gambled at the bar but that was all I knew. The cops told me that my boyfriend Eddie, good old Eddie, had over $50,000 in gambling debts and when he couldn’t pay, they decided that they would teach him a lesson and kill him. Some lesson. I knew Eddie was trouble but I didn’t know he was that much trouble. Since it’s too hot to do anything during the day, I sit in my chair and I go over how we met in my head, over and over again. Like I’m trying to find the key to a door that might unlock why we even started going out.

I met Eddie on a Monday night. I was in my favorite bar having a drink at 10 pm when Eddie walked in. I don’t usually drink on Monday nights but I had a hard day at work. I was at work till 8 pm that night, helping my boss with her presentation that he waited to do till the last minute. I hate when he does that, waiting to prepare a presentation till the night before. You’d think I get used to it by now, since it’s been his pattern for the last two years, but I still keep thinking he might one day do something a little different. Fat chance. So there I am sitting at the bar having a conversation with Mark the bartender and Jeanne, a woman I had met the bar on a different occasion. I was a regular at that bar. I wasn’t exactly a resident, not like some of the people there, but I guess I was there often enough. Next thing I know this guy sits down at the empty bar stool next to me and joins our conversation. I took one look at him and I could feel myself licking my chops inside. The man was gorgeous. He had wavy dark blonde hair, hazel green eyes and a cute mustache and goatee. Everything about him screamed either construction worker or some other kind of manual laborer. I had a flashback of a coworker’s construction worker pinup calendar and I knew I was lost forever. I had never dated a guy like that before. Some of my friends had dated blue-collar type workers and I remember them saying they liked it. Not for very long, but they liked dating them.

Now Eddie wasn’t the most intelligent guy I had ever met in my life, but he could hold his own in a conversation, if you didn’t get too deep. Eddie had a lot of opinions on many things and he watched the news. Eddie was an electrician and it was interesting to hear him talk about all the things he could install. The rest of the night went by in a blur to me. Eddie sitting there, smoking and drinking screwdrivers, and me smoking and drinking light beer. We managed to talk all night till the bar closed, about what, I don’t remember. And then I remember Eddie driving me home, which was kind of funny since I only lived three blocks from the bar and it was a safe neighborhood. But Eddie insisted, and I found myself giving in. I must have really had a lot to drink that night because my next memory is of Eddie and me groping each other in my hallway and tearing each other’s clothes off. That was two years ago. Six months after that Eddie moved in. I didn’t want him to move in, but he insisted and I gave in again. I can’t stand when a man nags me, and Eddie was a constant nagger when he wanted something. Most of the time I just give in so I don’t have to hear the nagging.

I don’t know why I have go over and over again in my mind how Eddie and I met. I dated Eddie because he looked good period. He looked like he was out of a male pinup calendar and I never dated anyone that looked that good before. Eddie had other qualities but his looks were his best quality. There wasn’t anything that strange about him. So he drank a lot, so did I. He was kind of secretive about his life and his stuff, but not in a bad way. He was just secretive. And sometimes I think I didn’t care to know what his past was like. Some days it was enough for me that we had great sex, that I liked to watch him walk around my apartment naked and that I liked the fact that he fixed things around the house. I never saw Eddie as anything permanent and I don’t think he saw me as the love of his life. He told me he wanted to marry me, but Eddie told me a lot of things he wanted to do and never did. I knew Eddie gambled. He told me but he said it was just a hobby, not anything serious.

I keep thinking to myself there must have been something about Eddie’s behavior that should have been a tip off that one day I would find him lying in a pool of blood in my apartment, but I can’t find what that tip off was.