Abe

Posted June 7, 2017

Abraham, or Abe as he preferred, ran downstairs as soon as he heard the mailman drop the day's batch through the creaky brass slot. The creak was plenty warning alone, but the spring-loaded door always closed with a sharp snap.

Napping in a room furthest from the front door, and on another floor, Daisy raised her ear briefly but was asleep again within moments, this having occurred like clockwork for years. A deep sigh later and she was running across the lawn, fetching that wondrous blue ball once again and no shooting pain up her left rear hip.

The stack was large today. Fashion week, or something. Rummaging was always a guaranteed thrill. Something about seeing someone's personal things before they did. Not inside. No, he didn't snoop. But just knowing his father got a letter from something called PKR Industrial was enough to fuel plenty of wildly amazing and fantastically important theories. And he'd never know if he weren't the first to sift through this goldmine. But even the possibilities that his father was a clandestine secret agent working to defeat Hydra (or whatever they called themselves) wasn't enough to distract him from today's prize.

Pleading to himself, at least it should be today. Please be today!

No, today he was looking for the long, nondescript, but impressively thick envelope from Ithaca, New York. Out of state!

Three catalogs of boring clothes with boring people looking bored. Something he'd heard called "another fucking bill" at least a hundred times. A letter to his sister from Aunt Jenny. Her birthday is on Friday. She hadn't let any of them forget it, not with constant, not-so-subtle hints for the past two weeks. She only turns sixteen once, she says.

Finally, just before the latest issue of National Geographic, was the jewel. He was spectacularly anxious this week. After his brief phone conversation with an adjacent mob boss last week (this one in Colorado!), he couldn't wait to see the bloody results of their combined forces in a surprise attack on a mutual rival.

The alliance was only temporary, and he knew that. He planned to remove his newly acquired ally with a swift and unexpected assault on a now exposed and vulnerable flank. It wasn't nice, but that's not the name of the game. He would control this and the next fifty blocks. No sixteen year old from Aurora was going to stop him.

No matter that his birthday, just six short weeks before Anna's, brought him only to Level Eleven as he liked to think of it since the first day he played D&D. That was now a fading memory in the shadow of the building hoopla surrounding his sister's coming of age, though.

Upstairs, alone, and preparing for battle statistics, the letter rips open without a fight.

Tossing the command cards aside for now, he pulls out the after action report. Computer-generated and thin, but still thick. This round was intense and the number of pages foretold a multitude of length, and costly, battles.

He would have plenty in reserve to strike again immediately, as was required if this subterfuge was to be successful. No, he would be fine. He had thought long and hard about strategic placement and his ally was an unwittingly agreeable pawn.