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Home Invasion

Posted on November 27, 2007
Filed Under The Stories |

The patter of footsteps was soft enough to have been mistaken for any number of things that wouldn’t be considered foul play. Unfortunately for the bearer of said pittering and pattering feet, Amadeus Duck was not a homeowner who took sudden unexpected noises in his stride. He didn’t say, “it’s probably mice or a stray candlestand.” No Amadeus Duck cocked the hammer on his always-loaded shotgun and stepped onto the creaking floorboards of the first floor landing in his house and said, “This is your only warning to step out into the open with your hands in the air. Any further conversation will be conducted between my shotgun and any body parts of yours that happen to be within range. I suppose I would damage my home a little but I could always redecorate with the reward money I get for apprehending a dangerous criminal.”

Leslie Quinn had lived most of life on the run from something or the other. Most often he had been running from his past and he felt, right then, like he had reached the end of the line. It hadn’t even been his idea to try and rob this house. It was too visible and too full of the kind of shiny stuff he didn’t know how to work and would definitely find hard to sell. If it hadn’t been for his friend Jonas he would have been curled up in a corner of the only overstuffed chair they had in the toilet they called home, trying to watch TV on the temperamental stolen cable they accessed from the motel two blocks away. It was just his luck that he found himself trapped instead in the home of a man he didn’t even really want to steal from. He suspected that Jonas had beaten a hasty retreat the moment the man had spoken.

Even in the predicament he was in, Leslie couldn’t help thinking that the man with the gun sounded fat. He had a rich, fat man’s voice. Lester had a thing for voices. He liked to guess what a person looked like just from listening to their voice. He lumbered forward, skinny and pathetic, and allowed his shadow to stretch into the pool of light cast by the moonlight coming in through the man’s large fancy windows.

Amadeus Duck squinted his eyes and found himself surprisingly disappointed that the man attempting to take what was not rightfully his was such a puny, pathetic-looking individual. He had been prepared for a wily brigand with a slim black mask across his eyes and perhaps a horizontally striped t-shirt in alternating shades of green and black. He was totally unprepared for a disheveled loser who didn’t appear even the least bit worthy of the buckshot in his gun. So he rumbled, “Step forward sir, I’d like a better look at your face.”

Leslie complied, slouching forward with every step so that he had to pull himself up, quite like a stubbornly slack marionette so that he could raise his head to show his face to the man whose home he had broken into. He was right, the man was indeed fat and if his eyesight hadn’t begun to fail him, Leslie would have convinced himself that the man looked familiar as well.

Amadeus’s thunderous call to arms had also woken his wife and she had wandered onto the landing, bleary-eyed and drowsy, looking like a long-suffering wife must feel every time her husband holds forth like a conquering commander when in truth he’s probably just heard a mouse or other common household pest. So her eyes popped open in some surprise when she actually saw a man standing below them. And then her eyes became wider still when she realized that the man below them looked very familiar. She could never mistake that nose.

It was true that Leslie had a peculiar nose, not just in appearance but also in application. When he was younger he had been able to distinguish between summer and winter rain just by sniffing any that might have been stored in bottles (not that too many people had any use for rain water). He had been able to tell if a storm was coming or whether it would just be a light dusting of snow not unlike powdered sugar on French toast. Right then he smelt a smell he hadn’t smelt in over two decades. Before he could put a name to the smell however, a loud scream rent the fabric of the still, quiet night. Doreen Duck looked like she had seen a ghost and in fact in her mind she felt exactly that. She was certain the ghost of Leslie Quinn had come to visit and screaming was her only way of dealing with the fact that she hadn’t wanted to be dressed in a nightgown the next time she saw him.

Amadeus Duck heard the sound of a cat shying away in surprise at the wrenching wail his wife annunciated. He waited for her lungs to empty and then he whirled upon her with the same aggression he had exhibited during their twenty three years together, “Get a hold of yourself woman. I know we have a burglar but I’m holding the gun. There is no need for vocal histronics. You’ll wake the neighbours. I’d rather they woke to the sound of a gunshot than your dreadful wailing.”

Leslie Quinn had taken the opportunity provided by the distraction of the man with the gun to attempt to tip-toe out of sight but something the wailing lady said gave him pause. Doreen Duck’s voice rang clearly down to his tired ears as she said, “What good are bullets against a ghost Amadeus?”

[Amadeus?] The name rang an immediate bell in Leslie head. For the first time in over two decades his spine stiffened without any great effort. He glared up at the landing and tried to get another look at the fat man who was berating his wife, “You have finally taken leave of what few senses you had left my dear. That is not a ghost and I will shoot him if I have to.”

Doreen Duck grabbed her husband’s arm, “Don’t you dare. That’s my Leslie. Life took him away from me and after all these years he has returned. Don’t you dare defile his memory but firing your smelly gun at Leslie’s ghost.”

That’s about when it occurred to Doreen that Leslie’s ghost seemed to have aged somewhat. She went to the landing and squinted in the pale moonlight, trying to get a better glimpse at her long lost love. The man below her raised his eyebrows and looked like he didn’t dare breathe the word but eventually he did, “Doreen?”

“L-Leslie?”

“Is that really you?”

“Are you a benevolent ghost?”

[Ghost?]

“But Doreen I am very much alive.”

“Oh Leslie, I’m so sorry. You don’t even remember dying. It was terrible, absolutely terrible. I was prepared to live out the rest of my days as your unwed widow but Amadeus convinced me it wouldn’t have been what you wanted. And then he agreed to marry me. Where have you been all this while?”

The glow of the moonlight highlighted Leslie’s confusion and he frowned, “But Amadeus told me your father had refused to let me marry you. He said Mr. Baudelaire threatened to disinherit you and make it impossible for me to find work. I couldn’t do that to you so I left. What is this about my death?”

“You’re really not dead?”

“No!”

“What are you doing here?”

“I fell upon hard times after I lost you. Life never quite felt worth living after that. It wasn’t my idea to steal from this place but my friend Jonas…he said we might be able to make enough to avoid getting evicted this month…”

“Ah-ha! An accomplice!” Up until that point, Doreen had forgotten about her despicable husband. That he hadn’t been able to remain silent when his entire scheme was unveiled confirmed to her, once and for all that she was, and had always been, better off without Amadeus Duck. So Doreen Duck nee Baudelaire stamped her foot and the creaky floorboard, which was actually a loose floorboard reared up under Amadeus Duck, pitched him off balance and dropped him over the railing. He fell in a messy heap and since he hadn’t had the good sense to let go of the gun he shot himself in the face upon impact with the ground.

Doreen Duck waited a year and one month after her husband’s untimely and accidental death before she moved her long-lost lover Leslie Quinn into the home she had shared with Amadeus for twenty-three years. For the first time since she heard that Leslie had died in a freak fishing accident, she was happy again.

Though he never quite understood why, Doreen insisted that Jonas be Leslie’s best man at their wedding. Especially since hard-of-hearing Jonas always thought that Doreen referred to him as stupid.

In truth she meant Cupid.

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