[Kingzjester]

I don't know where I am going with this... well, that is a lie. I know exactly where this story is going. I am but posting a small bit for thine critique first:

The Abhorrent Crime of Michael C.



Once upon a time in a kingdom far, far away, in an opulent satellite village of the capital city where the king's public house was - that is to say, the house that was open for the inquisitive public to wander through... ugh... so let me start over....

Once upon a time in a suburb called Chevy Chase, there lived a man by the name of Michael C. Michael C. had a nice house with authentic faux brick siding and a nice garden with two nice gnomes and a yawning terracotta frog (the frog too was nice). His next-door neighbor on the right (where house numbers descended) was Michael B. who had a nice house with genuine simulated wood shingles imported from the exotic faraway lands of Virginia and a more than nice garden with two gnomes and a terracotta fairy resting her red buttocks on a plump terracotta stump. Michael B.'s grass was green, jolly, and generally healthier-looking than Michael C.'s. Michael C.'s first neighbor on the left (where the house numbers ascended) was Mark D. who in all honesty had an equally nice house as his neighbors though it was frowned upon by consensus. All the wholesome people in the neighborhood glared when his house was brought to their attention because it was painted black, much like a high rollers bathroom in some upscale casino. Instead of a nice garden, Mark D. allowed crabgrass, wild grapes, and gargantuan cabbages to grow unsupervised. Instead of nice gnomes, Mark D. had two oversized (though still somewhat nice) pawns with handles on their bald heads from a chess set that would be most comfortable on multi-colored pavement tiles in a park. There was also a lone terracotta brick in Mark D.'s yard. Why? you may ask. Well, I'll tell you the whole tale: in the days of old, before he settled in a swamp and named a city after himself, Chevy Chase descended from mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments given to him by the Omnipotent Homeowners' Association... on second thought, it is a fairly long and tedious story...

Michael C. was a lawyer. And so was Michael B. Mark D. used to be a practicing lawyer, but fell out of practice. When our story took place he was teaching something obscure at College Park, poisoning young though inflexible minds with his philosophizing. A smallish, sallow man, he looked very much like that wee, slinky Judas figure from that much praised triple-portion movie that came out in increments recently... You know, the one made after a saccharine epic written by some English pansy linguist. Mark D. was a kind old man who hated children. It was a good thing then that his daughter shared his sentiment. They went along peachily. At the time Dolores A. (she took her famous husband's family name) was a district attorney for the Burns County. She visited her father fairly often and they would sit in the yard and talk at length about anarchy and plutocracy, both of which reigned at the time (former de jure, latter de facto). Lola's mother had died a horrible death a few decades earlier stricken by a severe case of dyslexia. How does one die from dyslexia? you may wonder. Suffice it to say that euthanasia was somehow involved. Nobody likes to talk about it.

Michael B. always had a crick in his neck from compulsively grooming his lawn. Because of constant neck pain his eyes bulged and he ground his teeth. He owned eight hundred dollars worth of novelty pruning scissors. He once walked into a plant nursery and asked where he could hire a plant nurse to hand him utensils while he operated. Pretty much everyone who knew him or knew of him considered him a man of renaissance, a genius (our Michael B. is indeed the one and the same Solicitor General Michael B. who held three successive U.S. Attorneys' General by their balls, firmly). He was a marvelous lawyer with a great deal of contempt for the law, a prodigious gardener who chose to sell his soul so that he may - albeit figuratively - clutch other people's testicles.

Michael C. was a tall, square-jawed, noble-looking man of flowing dark hair that enchanted many a kind maiden - too bad he was completely evil. Evil even by lax lawyer standards. Eviler still than that vile Dixiecrat Thomas Jefferson. Once he killed a man in cold blood and justified it as a freak racquetball accident. He escaped the state only to come back shortly after the Pope pardoned him. Or something. I never was a stickler for the intricate workings of the law. He had a decapitation fixation, feared slingshots and flying pebbles. Michael C. also hated both his neighbors. And, like I said, he killed a man - all true - but the Crime he was planning to commit on that hot summer day (when water was strictly rationed and when our story begun) would eclipse all this, several times over.

...