Ready or Not By Roy Dorman

Stepping down from the footstool, Edward Warner walked over to his apartment door and undid the dead bolt and also the chain lock, leaving only the key lock still locked. The landlord had a master-key for that one. Once he was missed, he didn’t want people to have to break in the door to get to him. Edward was a considerate kind of guy. As long as he was down from his perch, he also decided to move the note from the kitchen counter to the coffee table near the couch. They wouldn’t be able to miss that. He’d worked long and hard getting the note just right. He went into the bathroom to see if he could pee just one more time. He’d heard about bodily functions making things yucky and he didn’t want a mess. Very considerate. He’d actually thought about getting some of those adult diapers, but then thought wearing one of those might be construed as maybe being just a little too persnickety. He’d settled on an enema and hadn’t had anything to drink for the last couple of hours. He took one look around to see if there was anything else to be done to make this whole thing come off as smoothly as possible. He was back up on the footstool with the rope tight around his neck, ready to go, when his cat, Mister Jones, sauntered out of the bedroom. Damn! He’d forgotten to put food and water out for Mister Jones. While squatting down to spoon out the cat food into the bowl, Edward noticed a couple of dust bunnies near the refrigerator and some crumbs of some sort under the kitchen table that Mister Jones had missed. With a sigh, he decided the living room could probably use a quick vacuuming, too.

© 2014 Roy Dorman

Roy Dorman is retired from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Benefits Office and has been a voracious reader for 60 years. He has had poetry and flash fiction published recently in Apocrypha and Abstractions, Burningword Literary Journal, Drunk Monkeys, The Screech Owl, Crack The Spine, and Lake City Lights.

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