1. A Little Place Called Heaven


    Date: 9/28/2015, Categories: Humor, Author: WritersFriend, Rating: 1, Source: LushStories

    wired to work off a gas generator. Me and Jake set ourselves up there, outfitting it with a generator, a window air-conditioner, three fold-down cots, a couple of chairs, coolers and ice, a hotplate, and a week’s worth of supplies. We also bought a thirty-pack of beer, a fifth of Canadian Club, duct tape and rope, a couple of fans, two prepaid cellphones, and two full-face Halloween masks, one of Barack Obama and the other Hillary Clinton. For the next two days we watched the Periwinkle residence through binoculars. The old man was away on business, we’d heard, due back late the following evening. Both days around two Mrs. Periwinkle hopped in her white sports coupe and drove into town. She was a wisp of a thing, no more than five-two or -three, with slender gams and pale, creamy skin. Wearing short colorful sundresses and a big-brimmed white hat, she went into a couple of shops and bought a few things, stopped at the diner for an iced lemonade, and then returned home. All in all she was never gone more than two hours. On the third day of our stakeout we followed her back from town, and when she pulled in her laneway and got out of her car, we wheeled in behind her. After losing a coin flip, Jake was wearing the Hillary mask and I the Obama. Stunned to see two high-ranking Democrats on her property, Mrs. Periwinkle dropped her shopping bag and purse and let out a shriek. Jake ran up and wrapped her in a bear hug and hustled her to the rear of the Taurus, her kicking and ...
    swearing along the way. As I opened the trunk, she stomped the spike of her white high-heeled shoe down hard on Jake’s instep. “Sweet Jesus Molly Malone!” he howled, doing a Russian one-step. He almost lost her, but recovered quickly and flopped her into the trunk. I slammed the lid shut. Jake took off his mask and limped toward the passenger door. “She’s a feisty little ball of hate,” he said, his florid Irish face in a grimace. “That’s gonna cost the old man an extra five gees.” I changed the amount in the ransom note from $10,000 to $15,000 and duct-taped it and a burner phone to the front door of the house. We hightailed it back to the cabin, got Mrs. Periwinkle’s high heels off her feet, and dragged her inside. With the air-conditioner on it was a little cooler but still sub-tropical. In addition to the main area and lavatory, there was one little room that we’d boarded up and furnished with a cot and a fan. “If you can behave yourself,” I told Mrs. Periwinkle, “you can stay in there and we won’t tie you up.” She looked inside the room and, probably not thrilled about being hog-bound in a sweltering hotbox, decided to acquiesce. We couldn’t shut the door because, with the only air-conditioner cooling the main room, she would have suffocated in the heat. It soon became apparent that buying just one window unit had been a serious error because it meant that me and Jake had to keep our masks on, which spiked our body temperatures to dangerous high levels. We grabbed a cold beer ...
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