One of the most fascinating things about humans is their ability to possess layers. Layers to their mental state, their self-worth, their emotions… And, of course, not every human possesses the same levels. But for every human being (or non-human), there is the person that presents himself to the outside world. This is the person that wishes to be seen and judged: the best foot forward, as it were. This person makes a show of appearing to have all his ducks in a row, all his cards in hand. Their life is ideal, as far as you know, and who are you to argue? Now and again some event will occur that will shift that opinion, the veil slipping to reveal that all is not as perfect and vanilla as one would hope to make it seem. Over time, the image one wishes to present becomes perfected. Look at my simple, average house, he will say. Look at my simple car I keep moderately clean, taking it for drives into town for groceries or perhaps my dry cleaning. Look at my modest paycheck I earn from working my simple job, which funds my average life. Observe my nice, clean lawn with all its pretty little flowers planted in rows.
Meticulously, mathematically-crafted rows.
Spotless petals fanned out in perfect rays of color across a painstakingly-manicured lawn, like a sea of dark green kept clean of any debris Mother Nature would dare vomit upon it. This beautiful testament to a dramatic shift between an old life and a new one. And, possibly, one of the first signs of obsessive madness.
But we get ahead of ourselves.
The story we find here does not delve into the depths of insanity. Not yet. First we get acquainted with our subjects, their lives, their first layers we encounter.
This is Billy.
Billy is an idiot.
This is not said to insult him. It is a scientific, documented fact. This level of idiocy is so astounding that it cannot be considered a handicap so much as a talent. The boy is, frankly, gifted. And if you cannot tell by looking at his carefree smile etched into his pudgy, ten-year-old face, you might be able to see the brain cells dying in his head if you look into his empty, beady eyes. As he hummed a nonsensical song to himself, he bounced down the sidewalk. This is not an exceptionally odd habit for most ten-year-old boys (for children generally are carefree most of the time), so the first opinion one might form about Billy is that he is happy, but perhaps not a happy brain surgeon or rocket scientist. That was fine with the boy. It was how he chose to present himself. Only those who knew Billy, personally spoken with the child, had a grasp on his true nature. His inner destructive persona, an immature, sugar-driven maniac bent on loving everything to death. But perhaps one should not turn the little boy away. After all, he can't really mean it.
The people of Endsville have found by now, however, that it doesn't really matter if the boy means it or not. Where his feet touch the ground chaos and irritation follow, and the people want nothing to do with that, thank you. Most avoid the child as much as they can, or send him away as quickly as possible. Fortunately for these same people, they can return to the comfort of their own homes, lock their doors against the world, and forget their troubles (like Billy) for the day.
Unless, of course, Billy comes knocking on your door.
For the neighbors on across the street from Billy, this was not a problem, as the boy's attention span was so short he would become distracted half-way across the street if he did not focus or have his goal written on his hand. For his next-door neighbor, fortune was not so giving. It didn't take much to walk eight steps past his own front gate and through his neighbor's.
That's just what he did. He sidled through the carefully-painted wooden gate, ignoring the fact that it had been locked and he had just forced his way in and broken the iron lock on the other side. The piece of metal bounced to a stop before the boy's worn sneakers, and he became preoccupied with kicking it towards the steps to the front door. The grass around him sparkled lightly after a fresh sprinkling and bees hummed somewhere off to the side. Billy continued to kick the metal towards the house, using all his mental facilities to keep it in a straight path on the bleached walkway. He kept his narrowed eyes on the clanking black piece and brought his foot back farther than before, intent on kicking it straight to the front step. He was already counting on the loud, obnoxious noise it would make. He brought his foot forward, hard, and kicked the piece in a wide arch up into the air.
It connected with the bridge of his neighbor's nose.
Billy huffed, disappointed that metal-on-bone did not make the musical clang he had been expecting. His neighbor, one Reginald Skarr, made his own very interesting sound, however. Something between a yelp and a sneeze. He clamped his hands over his face, ducking down in case there was a second attack to come.
"AUGH!"
"Well, don't cry about it, Mr. Skarr," was Billy's response. The middle-aged man looked up through a teary eye, face half-hidden by his hands.
"I'm not crying!" he snapped. The protest was muffled slightly.
"It's hard to tell since you only gots one eye. Are you sure you're not crying? Sometimes when I cry—"
"I don't care!" Skarr shot back, straightening and tearing his hands away from his face.
"—my nose runs and it's like my nose is crying too. HEY, your nose is running!" Billy pointed to the blood trickling down his neighbor's face, clearly from his nose, "So you are crying!"
"I'm not crying, you little, annoying PEST. Get off my lawn!" The main pointed towards the street with one long, bony finger, ignoring the blood dripping onto his flower-printed shirt.
"I just came over to see if you wanted to play," Billy said lightly, shoving his hands into his pants pockets.
"NO!" Skarr bellowed, pointing again, "You know you aren't welcome on my property, you little nuisance! Go away!" His face had turned almost as red as the blood on it, and a vein had crept up onto his temple. Billy was either unimpressed or had not noticed, and frankly either one was equally likely.
"So…. Tomorrow, then?"
Skarr bent and picked up the metal lock that had broken his nose. He hurled it back at the boy. The lock whistled as it sailed over Billy's head and embedded itself deep into the wooden fence behind him.
"You missed!" Billy laughed. His high-pitched giggle was almost drowned out by a growl from his neighbor.
"And tell your parents they can expect a bill for that lock you broke!" With nothing more he was willing to throw at the child, blunt objects or insults, Reginald Skarr turned and retreated back into his house, slamming the heavy door behind him. Several clicks were heard as a multitude of locks were shifted into place. Billy began to amuse himself by singing a mocking mantra at the silent house until he eventually lost track of what he was doing and turned around on his heels, intent on going back to his own house, possibly to ease his nagging appetite for something deep-fried and cheesy.
We join Reginald Skarr inside his home for the continuation of this chapter.
The man seethed and muttered to himself as he poured a glass of whiskey. He did hope that the stress of living in this neighborhood wouldn't be the cause of some crippling alcohol addiction. So far he seemed to be doing alright, however. He loathed the boy. With every fiber of his body and soul he despised the child and all his neighbors. It was an exhausting thing, so much hatred. But for all his utter and extreme loathing, his unmatched rage for them all, he still found himself making the effort to present a different side to them all. Why else would he spend so long on his yard? It was a habit that kept his heart from exploding, true, but it was something for them to walk by and witness. Something simple and average for them to acknowledge. He wasn't a bad person. He did not deserve scorn or jeers from them, did he? Why, no. Just look at his yard. Look at his simple house and his normal daily routines.
"I'm a good neighbor…" he hissed under his breath before throwing the drink back. He had to keep telling himself that or he would surely send himself off the deep end.
Reginald Skarr had many, many layers. All of them were deeply hidden, most of them dark, a few of them explicitly unsavory, and at least two were completely unspeakable. The garden was the only outlet he allowed himself because it was the only thing he could see himself doing (without going to jail) that was beneficial to his own mental state.
Truth be told, it all stemmed from his overwhelming need for control and order. Years in military service can do that to a man.
He sat at his kitchen table and poured himself another drink. His deeper layers showed their faces in fleeting ways so long as he was in his garden. The meticulous way he organized the plants, planned their landscaping for optimal aesthetics, or the way he kept everything so trim and clean, that was his need for order in this psychotic city. He had no one to command him and likewise no one to command, therefor he needed to manufacture a situation in which he was granted some form of power over lesser beings. In this case, those beings were plants. Pathetic? Maybe, he thought, sipping from his glass as he stared out his kitchen window. But he took solace in the fact that if he ever did decide to take control over real people again, they wouldn't like that, now, would they?
No, of course not.
So they really all ought to have been grateful. Rather than laying siege to this horrendous neighborhood, he ripped weeds out of the ground and mulched them into nothing. Rather than enslaving hundreds—thousands—of people, he slaved away in dirt and grass to achieve some small scrap of perfection. It was laborious. It was not very fruitful. But it was something. He took another sip, his mind wandering as it pleased.
Reginald Skarr's darker layers liked to crop up without his notice. The way he could have easily killed Billy with nothing more than a metal lock, but chose not to, showed his odd level of restraint. He needed to fit in among the people of Endsville. He didn't want to be evil and malicious anymore.
Too taxing.
These were just the very general sides to the man that was Reginald Skarr. Only two very broad categories by which one could group all his little quirks and tendencies into.
Just as his heart rate had begun to slow, he heard the familiar, but ominous, chime of his doorbell.
Skarr only ever got two visitors.
And Ernest never used the doorbell. He preferred to stare into the window until the door was opened for him.
Skarr finished his drink and set the glass aside, mentally counting up and down from one to ten, over and over and over again. He didn't think he would survive two episodes in one day. Despite his habitual exercise to calm his nerves, he found his heart pounding and his frown deepening the closer he got to the door. With his jaw clenched tight, he went through the arduous task of undoing every single lock (seven) on his door. The doorbell rang again and a vein popped up on his temple again. He threw the door open, chest puffed and fist clenched tight as his side.
"WHAT?! What do you want-?!" He did not react fast enough to stop the words from flying out of his mouth (along with some very angry spittle), though he did have the human decency to regret them once he said them.
The woman at the door was not Ernest or Billy, and her tiny, chubby hand was still poised at the doorbell to ring it again. Her mouth fell open slightly at the sudden outburst and arrival of such a loud, angry man towering over her.
Though Skarr did not like neighbors (or really, anyone for that matter), he had the sense to at least know that, to him, this short, rather round woman had not yet done anything to deserve getting yelled at.
Or spit on.
For a moment they only stood there, him trying to recover mentally, standing just as straight and angrily as before, and her frozen like a deer in headlights. Seeing that her face was not likely to change out of its fearful expression without some enticing, he took a deep, calming breath through his still-broken nose.
"Can… I help you." It wasn't really a question. He wasn't in a giving mood. The woman's gray eyes shot down to his blood-stained shirt, then back up to his face, lingering on his bloodied nose and blind eye. Her mouth opened and closed once, like a fish out of water, before she managed a small squeak.
"Tea," was all she could say. He frowned more, tilting his head slightly at her.
"I beg your pardon?" The woman dropped her arm to her side, taking a small step back and clearing her throat.
"I… am unpacking… my kitchen boxes…" she began, "And I cannot seem to find any of my teas." She fiddled with the edge of her sleeve, looking back down to the blood on his shirt.
"Tea," he repeated, tilting his head back up.
"I was wondering if you perhaps had some I might use for the evening since I am certain no more unpacking will be done tonight but I see you are terribly busy and I must ask you excuse my interruption." As she spoke she took another careful step back. It took him a moment to process that this was an actual, genuine outreach for something simple, not a trap or a snide joke of some sort. This round, red-haired little woman was not likely to be a threat, anyhow.
"Yes. Tea," he said again, nodding, "Wait right here." He disappeared back into his house, closing the door. The woman stopped on the walkway, looking up at the door, then around. She wanted to be sure that if something unsavory were to befall her, one of the neighbors might see.
Skarr peered through his peephole down at the warped image of the stranger. She fidgeted on the concrete and twiddled her pudgy fingers nervously.
Not much of a threat at all.
He watched for just a bit longer, frowning and thinking, before heading back into his kitchen. He opened a cabinet above his stove and took down a box. A fleeting thought crossed his mind: What tea does she want? He huffed, taking out a few small teabags.
"She'll take what I give her," he reasoned crossly, putting the box back into the cabinet.
When he looked through the peephole again, she was still there.
That alone was a surprise.
She was looking off to the side, much less nervously now. She appeared to be scrutinizing the left side of his front lawn. He frowned heavily. People had every right to look, not to linger. He opened the door again, much less forcefully than before and held out his hand to her, offering the teabags. She jumped slightly, looking up quickly. He said nothing and kept his hand out, scowling.
Hesitantly, the woman stepped up and carefully took the bags from him.
"…Thank you, sir," she said, withdrawing her hand quickly. He raised an eyebrow.
"You're welcome. What were you looking at?"
"Beg pardon?"
"What. Were you. Looking. At?" he repeated, a slight growl in his voice. The woman blinked.
"….you have a very lovely yard," she said. This time, he blinked. For his part, he recovered quickly, deciding that dwelling would surely set himself up for some misfortune or ruse.
"Well. Thank you," he replied, already closing the door, "Good evening."
The woman took a step back as the door shut in her face. She cast a quick look over the front door again as she heard a series of clicks. She backed up another step, stumbling slightly onto the walkway, before she turned and started walking hurriedly away. As she left the property, she shut the gate, and, finding there was no lock, hurried down the street to return to her own home. But not before the same strange man she had just encountered watched her retreating figure through his peephole yet again. Watching in suspicion and…. slight admiration for that rather shapely aforementioned form.