Keith sat outside the door, the flaking yellow paint sprinkled the faded green U.S. army jacket.
A bottle of crown came to his lips and he obliged. He could hear his sister's whimpers on the inside, her boyfriend had gotten upset with her again and she had asked him to take a walk.
He would casually leave the room and take a seat against the door to listen.

He had just turned eighteen and was proudly proclaiming his freedom to his over-bearing parents
when his sister offered to celebrate and let him spend the night. They had always been close and often spent time together. They shared a love for art, being left handed, and the yearning for freedom from the ass-holes they had to deal with. Watching movies on the floor in front of the sofa that adorned the wall oppose to the TV and eating snacks was the depth of their worries until Paul came in.

He started in with just the slouched have-stare he always gave Keith. As if gauging his eyes, wondering what Keith was thinking. Keith read all of this and reveled in it. He had never liked Paul, whether it was the fact that he just looked like a prick, that slouching posture he took with every thing he did, or that he mistreated Melissa, Keith never could wrap himself around Paul.

Melissa and Paul had been dating for a few months before Paul had been abruptly denied Melissa's hand in marriage by their father.
They would get married anyway and ironically it would be Melissa's father who wed them.
The next two years of Melissa's miserable life would be spied upon by her younger brother in an attempt to gain the opportunity to put an end to it. Keith would watch Paul's every move, searching desperately for a false move so that he could have his excuse.

The chance finally came as Keith sat on his behind listening to the sharp whimpers of his adored older sister. Their year-old son's cries wouldn't be comforted, poor little guy, all he wanted was the toy he had thrown from his crib for the attention he would never receive from his father.

Keith downed another swig of the tongue-piercing bitterness that was the contents of the bottle before raising himself up. A moment before he felt his weary hand inch toward the handle of the cheap buck-knife that his sister bought him not two weeks before.
He had expressed an interest in buying one on the way out of the store where the two of them held jobs and Melissa naturally wouldn't let him go another day without it. The cheap blade was only a ten-dollar bill's worth of metal. The sides of the handle would pop off with the first few throws at the old pecan tree in the back yard of his home. Nothing a bit of electrical tape couldn't fix.

Though he remembered his fingers grazing over the semi-slick, tape covered handle of the knife that protruded from the black combat boot that hugged his foot, he couldn't remember if he had taken it out. He rose up, his back sliding against the paint, showering him with partials from the old door. He noticed that the whimpering had come to a abrupt halt. The sound of listening is ironically easy to hear. Two sharp whispers would tell Keith that 'Gabby' (Paul's ridiculous nickname) was headed toward the door.

Keith looked down the stairs of the second story apartment at the sidewalk and parking-lot that sat below him. 'Azalea parks' some small apartments in the middle of nowhere. The sun was setting to the rear of the apartments,casting a mighty shadow over the lot.
The street lights had all buzzed to life and glared on the windows.

Gabby's dark brown eyes appeared through the window before the door opened. Keith stepped to the side just in-time to miss him.

Gabby stepped out and looked around the bottom of the stair-way, his staggering walk told of his drunkenness.
Keith's chest pounded hard, Gabby was three inches from the edge of a fitting death. All Keith had to do was give him the slightest nudge...

Gabby swung around and shocked whimpers could be heard from inside. Melissa had met his gaze as he turned, Keith could only imagine the terror that span her features.
Gabby stepped toward the doorway, unaware that Keith stood behind the door right next to him. Another second ad Gabby would throw his hands over his head in a struggle to remove the headlock that choked the air from his brain.
Keith held as long as his arms would. He felt his feet lift from the ground.
An ex-boxer wouldn't have trouble lifting 140 lbs. Keith batted at Gabby's head with his right fist, more and more blood running from the 35 year-old's face. Keith's feet touched down again and Gabby ducked under his arm and got around behind him. Keith was smaller than most teens his age and dropping down was his only chance.
Gabby barreled down the stairs, grunts and half-cries echoing all the way down.

Keith lay his face down on the first step, the concrete that had just bruised him, would aid the swelling. The cool concrete was interrupted by the cries of the Patrick, the now fatherless infant.
A pool of blood painted the ground all around Paul's head, and had spread to the width of his outstretched arms by the time the neighbors had gutsied-up enough to come outside.

Melissa sat just inside the doorway sitting on the couch, her legs pushed up to her chest like a scared child. Keith lifted his head and turned to her, hers eyes were buried in her favorite Tinker bell pillow, the one Keith had bought for her birthday the year before.
Keith got up and walked over to kneel next to the couch.

'That's not what that's for...'

He said, taking the pillow from her face and lying it in his lap. He sat down next to her and laid her head in his lap, soothing her head with his soft hands, stroking her hair and whispering promises of better things as the police scrambled over the fresh 'accident'.


In the next few months Keith would move in with Melissa, this after her vowing never to rely on another man. Gabby's death would be ruled-out as an accident and nothing more would be said over it.

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