The 3 A.M. Epiphany, exercise 12

Roland kept noticing he had to go the bathroom. The feeling kept returning, even after relieving himself and coming to Marcie's house. He checked his shirt, he checked his fingernails. He ran his fingers through his hair again.

It may have been Marcie's house, but in her own way, she was late. She had stayed in the kitchen after all the coffee and water was served. Still, she insisted, the food needed to be reheated.

Mollie kneeled on the couch to Roland's right and stared out the window, through the lace curtains.

"I can still see the flag. That stupid bright flag. How he dares! I can see it through the blue, blue," she paused, "Marcie, this curtains are very, very clean. Did you do this yourself?"

"No, husband treated me to that drapery cleaning business, you know, from television?" she yelled over no noise.

Sharon did not look up from her Bible. She had crossed her legs and pulled her dress over the knee. It tick-tocked with a large wall clock from the dining room. The rhythm was so precise, she looked at the clock through the doorway and nodded. She flipped a good chunk of pages and stopped again.

"So, are we going to do this?" Roland asked, tired of thinking of putting up conversations that related to very little.

"Yes, the bastard is going to die," said Mollie identified.

"I'd say, within the week," Sharon stated without looking up.

Marcie entered, her food ready, as well as her point of view. "I just need, we, we just need to plan."

"Faggots infesting everything," Mollie mentioned. "But at least we have the big boys here, right?" She edged her chin towards Roland.

"Me? You give me too much credit," Roland understated.

"Look, you can do it, you can. We have everything planned out, all you gotta do is the heavy lifting," she continued without noticing his comment. She removed a folder from the table--it had been present the entire time but due to their own foci, they had not acknowledged. Inside, on crisp printed paper, sat a database. Roland could make out the timetable.

Sharon placed a yarn bookmark into her text and reached into her omnipresent handbag. She pulled out a similar observation table. Marcie had made copies for everyone and handed them out in unison, looking for some kind of specific notes--names, most likely--at the top of each one. Sharon began to compare her notes with Marcie's.

"Yep, the schedule is the same from two week's ago. He's got a schedule he must not like to deviate from. That could make this easy or hard."

Roland responded without pondering first, "hard, I mean, I mean, you don't know where he's going. You didn't tag him as he exited his house. This is all pure schedule out his front door. You don't know--he could be meeting with friends. Work's going to miss him some."

All three women looked at him as if he had swore.

"You have a better idea?"

"No. But I do know that leaving a papertrail is not exactly clear thinking either," he said without smiling.

Marcie looked at the paper like she would an unwanted insect.

Sharon shrugged and kept to her business. "I'd go with poisoning. I found these books at the bookstore about hwo to write about drugs and drugs usage. He's a homosexual. They all use drugs, that helps. No one is going to question an overdose of another creature like that. It'll be ruled a suicide and we can back to Thursday night Bible-study without rainbows without rain."

Mollie sat back down and sighed heavily as she looked at the schedule. "Did you find the justification in there?" She asked Sharon.

"Well, it's simple. It says We Shall Not Kill," the room raised eyebrows collectively.

"And yet they killed their own Savior. We'll need to pick and choose as they did, if we are to save the souls of this community," Sharon was not looking whilst she said this. She had already rehearsed it.

"What if he doesn't die?" Roland questioned.

"That's why we have the brawn," she poked Roland's bicep and smiled.

Roland sipped his tea.

"And what if I don't want to kill him?"

Marcie stepped back to the kitchen and he heard a drawer close.

"We can discuss that too."


Today's exercise is merely to discuss a meeting of four people who have decided to execute someone.