And then he Ran into my Knife!

He was not the greatest neighbor, but nobody would actually kill him…Right?

Oscar Kokashka was dead.

Ernie Potts was the poor sucker to find the guy face down and crumpled at the foot of the steps. He roused himself early in hopes of getting a good shower in before starting his day at the demolition company. With a mutter of 'Kokashka you bum' Potts made his way down the steps to move him.

As Ernie began to pick the man up, he felt something leaking on his clothes. Setting his neighbor down, he flips on the hallway light and gasps. Whoever wanted to kill Oscar was dead set about seeing him suffer; he had been clearly beat up by something blunt, whatever blood that didn't seep into his white undershirt and matted in his thinning and copper colored hair and beard had pooled onto the floor, an electrical cord had been tightly wrapped around his throat (rendering his face blue from strangulation), and he had been stabbed upwards of about ten times.

"GRAMPS!"

A squad car pulls up to 4040 Vine Street just as Oscar's body was in the process of being wheeled out from the front door and into the coroner's truck. From the pursing of her lips to the frustrated sigh he let out before bracing up the stairs, Detectives Ophelia Bennet and Emmanuel Stepford clearly had their work cut out for them in solving this case. After four hours of interviewing the boarding house residents, all the detectives succeeding in is confirming what they already knew from the case file:

"The guy was a Class-A bum!" Ernie said. "Lazy, scheming, and wouldn't know work if it tied his shoelaces together."

"I see so many scary men." Khiem said. "They have dark shades and sharp suits asking me where Oscar was. They say, he owed money. Even some kid Gino sent goons to the door. Sooo scary."

"That shiftless weasel mooched off anything with a pulse since." Grandpa Phil said. "And don't even get me started on the rows he'd have with Suzie. The way the two of them just went at it, got so routine that there came a point where shut eye was no longer lost as the two bickered into the night."

"Oscar got the best of everyone at one point or another." Arnold told the detectives. "I remember getting him a job delivering paper, and he made all these excuses; national holiday, illness, etc. *heh* I even had a dream once that he actually did do his job."

But for all their frustrations with the guy, nothing in Oscar's neighbors stuck out enough to made them suspect. Stepford sighed as Arnold wrapped up his testimony. Bennet looked down at the names of the boarders and noticed that she still had one last name to go; Suzie Kokoshka, the widow. The last anyone saw of her, she was racing around claiming she had to get to work because 'someone still had to pay for the funeral.'

All of a sudden, from their apartment: "Suzie! Make me a Sandwich."

"Oscar, dinner was two hours ago-"

"That cranky old man and his loony wife wouldn't let me have seconds. Now where is my sandwich?"

"We don't have anything to make one."

The duo make their way up the stairs into the Kokoshka apartment. Bennet opens the door to find Suzie reclining in her deceased husband's Lazy-boy wearing a simple black dress and the evil smile of a woman scorned that finally got revenge. On the little table next to her sits the iron, an extension cord and a large kitchen knife, all covered in scuff marks and blood.

"SVU. This is Stepford requesting backup at 4040 Vine Street. Over."

Suzie slowly raises her hand, as if to ask the officer not to arrest her yet and takes a large satisfied sip from the glass of wine she holds in her other hand. A tape recorder sits at her feet playing what was to become the final moments of her husband's life.

"Why not?"

"Because someone went to the racetrack and blew through this week's money."

"Yeah, well not my fault. That čurák bookie told me the horse was named 'Easy Street'. Anyway, what about money I left-"

"Rent. Which was still not enough to get us out of the hole with the Shortmans."

"Who is that ungrateful miser to sneer at $250?"

"An 'ungrateful miser' that should have thrown us into the street LAST YEAR YOU INDOLENT CLOWN!"

"WHY DO YOU KEEP MAKING SCENE AND WAKE NEIGHBORS LIKE THIS WHEN YOU KNOW I'LL GET TO IT TOMORROW?!"

-Silence.-

"Oh, a scene Oscar?"

-A scuffle breaks out as she grabs something from the closet. Blows land and Oscar whimpers for mercy.-

"I've waited for tomorrow ten years too long you good for nothing ass. But it never seemed to come, and all I did little by little was die inside. You know what that feels like Oscar? You want to FIND OUT?!

"Not…really…"

"A little late for that."

As Oscar's final moans blast from the recorder, the former Mrs. Kokoshka rises herself calmly giggling like a schoolgirl all the way. She pulls box after box after box from the little closet and tosses its contents about: years of losing betting slips from racetrack, decades of IOUs both legal and personal to the Shortmans, every forged check, every bank statement that declared them broke. All of it rained at the officer's feet like a ticker tape parade. Suzie's giggling intensified into unhinged laughter as she fell to the floor in relief.

Even today, if one stands the right way in the threshold of the former Kokoshka apartment, they can still her the demented laughter that rung out all those years ago.

Helga looks up from her paper to see Cecile and Eleanor asleep on the floor. The last half hour of the 11pm news blaring onscreen. They were so excited to see daddy on TV that they forgot to nap and…well, the rest spoke for itself. Luckily, Helga took a break from her latest work to record the segment for them. Once Danica Koch and Dylan Hunter signed off for the night, she tossed a blanket atop the two of them, turned the lights off, and tiptoed up the stairs.

Before joining Arnold in their bed, Helga took one last look at the former Kokoshka residence and shook her head in disbelief. There was no murder, no cackling wife or ghost story to speak of. Instead, the man met his maker as a victim of vehicular manslaughter while taking his nephew for ice cream from the Jolly Olly man. Because the driver just had to answer that damn text, he didn't notice the young boy wandering into the intersection. Oscar dashed after the kid, shielding him from the oncoming car.

It still felt weird to everyone that this was how it ended for the guy; Suzie especially. Night after night she had this recurring legal drama style dream of him being murdered at her own hands for all the ways he was a rotten bastard to her and their neighbors all these years. In time, she went insane after the whole ordeal and wound up joining a group home with, of all people, Grandma Miriam.

"…ehrt?" Arnold mumbled as Helga plopped down next to him. "Oh, hey darling."

"Evening football head." She said endearingly. "The kids are snoozing off downstairs and I've just finished another chapter."

"Oh, wonderful darling." He mumbled. "Goodnihg-zzzzz."

"Nighty night my sweet prince." She said.