SoC 2:4

The Laminator

 

It was around 10:15 when Laura Lee’s headlights passed around the isolated towns arching bend. On the left hand side of her was a local horse farm and behind those never-ending fields of snow-like dead dandelions and weedy shrubs lied the heavily car populated Route-48, which was producing the soundtrack for Laura Lee’s quiet car ride home from her overtime hours at Berryman’s factory, where she makes minimum wage while producing laminates for coffee mugs, Frisbees and anything else you can imagine a logo on. Her frail and crippling fingers were gripping the upholstered steering wheel as she was looking through the windshield with rain pouring down onto it and she was craving some ibuprofen for her work-driven, arthritis-filled joints. The windshield wipers were dragging slowly back and forth like an out-of-time grandfather clocks pendulum; she has been meaning to get those fixed for a couple months now. On the right hand side of her 1983 Ford pick up truck was a shallow woods area, which sometimes made a brief opening for a house or two which were usually separated half a mile apart from each other. Off in the distance her headlights caught glimpse of some character walking whom appeared as if they were struggling a little. “No one should be walking in this weather,” thought Laura Lee. She remained traveling at her neighborhood-safe, 15 mile per hour limit until she let up on the gas and veered towards the lonesome wanderer. Laura Lee’s trucks headlights showed the stranger: the teen-aged boy was drenched from the nights unexpected thunder/rain storm, and as she pulled up to him she began to roll down her window. “Need a ride?” Laura Lee politely asked.

Paul was in his brother’s bedroom speaking to him when suddenly he heard his phone ring a couple rooms over. He scampered over to his bedroom, quickly grasping his cell phone and flipping it open before his newly downloaded ring tone ended. His caller ID said it was Kyle, a friend since early childhood.

“Yo man, what’s going on?” Paul asked when he picked up.

“Meh, nothing much… kind of bored, ya know? Nothing to do… What are you up to?”

“Pretty much nothing, wanna chill?”

“Sure, but I can’t have people over, man. My parents just went to sleep.”

“Alright, you can come over here if you want to. You gotta ride?”

“Nah, I can walk though.”

“Man, it’s raining pretty hard outside… are you sure? I can get my mom or dad to come get you…” Paul offered.

“It’s cool man. I’ll be over in, like, twenty,” Kyle hung up the phone.

Kyle left his house around 9:50 and started heading towards Paul’s house. Kyle lived in an apartment complex next to some horse farm that some of his friends used to ride at when they were younger. He was pretty much out of the way of all of his friends and was lucky to even be in the same school district as Paul, seeing as he lived on the borderline of the next town over. It was raining pretty hard that night but Kyle wasn’t regretting not asking Paul’s parents for a ride over, he only needed to see Paul for a couple of minutes and didn’t feel like hassling with his parents. Plus, he wanted to get out of his own home for a couple hours; his parents recently got into a divorce and he was living with his mom. For the last couple of weeks she had been so depressed and hadn’t gone to work; Kyle hated being around her because it made him feel horrible about himself, too. He was glad that Paul offered him a home to come to, he really enjoyed Paul’s house. Paul’s dad owns his own business and is practically rolling in money; his home is like a mansion. “Man, Paul is so lucky,” Kyle would always think. “He has it made for him. I wish my parents made it so easy for me.”

Paul’s dad had just arrived home from work when Paul had made his way downstairs. It was now about ten o’clock at night.

“Hey dad, Kyle’s coming over. He’s probably going to spend the night; is that cool?”

“Yeah, sure, it’s fine with me. How is his mom doing?” Paul’s dad asked.

“Eh, Kyle doesn’t really like talking about it so much. He hasn’t told me anything, he seems really reluctant towards the subject.”

“God, that’s so sad to see. Kyle’s such a good kid; he really doesn’t deserve to see what his parents are going through. Tell him he can come over whenever he wants; the house is open to him.”

Paul and Kyle were such good friends that Kyle was practically a son to Paul’s family. They had been friends since they were 6, and although their parents never spoke to each other, Kyle always had some bond with Paul’s parents. He could talk to them about anything, they were like parents of his own, and Paul’s parents really hated watching Kyle’s parents act up around him when he was home. That’s why they always offered him a place to stay; they didn’t want him to have no choice when it came to staying with his dysfunctional parents while they were going through a tough time on their own.

By the time Kyle was 10 minutes into his walk over to Paul’s, he was as wet as a coral sponge in the deep ends of an ocean. The rain had soaked into his sweatshirt and his flesh felt like it was slowly sliding off like a snakes old, flaky skin. While suffering in the cold and drenched from head to toe, he could still only think about how great Paul had it at his home with his welcoming parents. “…And he has that swimming pool; he’s so lucky that they can afford a swimming pool… and his mom’s such a good cook, he always has an amazing meal for dinner every night,” Kyle was listing off pro’s and con’s in his head. “He gets everything he wants, too. I remember when I told him about that guitar that I was hoping my parents would get me for Christmas, but they never did. But who did get it? Oh, Paul got it. Paul gets everything. Why the hell does Paul get everything?” Kyle’s thoughts were overflowing in his mind. His head felt so heavy and confused that it seemed like there was a build-up of wax pouring out of his ear canals. For some reason he was angry; he had never been this angry towards Paul before. He had never felt this angry towards anyone before and he didn’t know why. He never really had any idea of why he thought the way he did or whether it was healthy or not; he was so confused about himself and everyone around him. It was as if people were tormenting him all the time, when they weren’t actually at all. He felt like the showcase highlight in a freak show. From behind him he heard a car coming, the headlights made it so he could see the puddles on the street and the cold wetness that started to absorb in the bottom of his pant legs. “This sucks,” Kyle said to himself. “This really sucks.”

Suddenly, things turned for the better as a middle-aged woman stopped next to him. The window rolled down and she asked, “Need a ride?”

He had been told, like everyone else when they’re children, to not get into a car with a stranger. However, right now, as he was drenched in what seemed like pounds of rain, he made an exception. “That would be awesome,” Kyle replied back to her.

Laura Lee parked outside of where the boy she had just picked up asked him to drop her off. “Geez, that would have been a long walk for you in this weather,” Laura Lee exclaimed.

“Yeah, thank you so much ma’am. Have a good night, and thanks again,” Kyle shut the door as he left Laura Lee’s pick up truck. He ran to Paul’s front door and rang the doorbell as he huddled his limbs together trying to keep warm in the cold, wet night. Laura Lee pulled away when she watched Kyle enter the house.

“Evening Mr. Berryman. Did Paul tell you I was coming over?” Kyle asked Paul’s father.

“Yes, he did. It’s nice to see you again; are you going to spend the night, Kyle?” Mr. Berryman asked.

“Eh, I’m not sure. We’ll see…”

“Alright, well, I want you to know that you’re allowed to stay whenever you feel like it. I know it must be hard at your home right now and our family wants you to be as comfortable as possible while going through your parents… you know, their divorce thing.”

“Yeah… thanks Mr. Berryman,” Kyle replied with his eyes on the ground, signifying an obvious avoidance in the conversation.

“Alright, well… I just wanted you to know. Paul’s upstairs in his room.” Kyle ran upstairs.

Laura Lee slid her key into the lock of her apartments door and opened it. She took off her rain-slicked jacket and hung it on a clothes hanger inside of her closet. She then flicked the light switch and was embarked upon her cluttered apartments kitchen. It was now nearing quarter to eleven as she fumbled through her medicine cabinet like a blind man reading brail on a bathroom sign. She found the pain reliever she so badly needed, guzzled down six of them with a glass of water and then left the bottle out on the kitchen table for future reference. Before retiring to bed for that night she checked her answering machine and the three messages that were awaiting her.

The first one was from her mother: “Hi…,” there was an unusually long pause before her mother’s irritable, nasally voice spoke up again. “Laura Lee… are you home?”

“No, I’m not home,” Laura Lee said to herself. “That’s why you got the answering machine, Mom.”

“Laura Lee?” Her mother’s message went on. “Well, okay… I guess I’ll call back later then.” Laura Lee pressed a button to hear the next message.

“Laura Lee, are you home yet?” It was her mother again. “Laura Lee, pick up the phone… are you there? You’re probably still at work… Laura Lee… you home, Laura Lee?… Alright, I’ll call back later.” Laura Lee decided the next message was probably a replica of the last two and, in order to resist anymore temptation to want to strangle her mother, she just went to her bedroom to lie down and fall asleep; she had had a long day.

Kyle had made his way up to Paul’s room to witness Paul lying down on his bed watching the basketball game on his big screen television.

“Yo man, need some dry clothes?” Paul asked Kyle, looking at his sopping wet sweatshirt and jeans.

“Oh, no thanks. I’m fine.” Kyle replied.

“Dude, you’re soaked. I don’t even want you sitting on my furniture like that. Here, I’ll get you some sweatpants and something else.”

Paul was rummaging around his closet for something dry for Kyle to wear when Kyle spoke up, “Why can’t I sit down like this? What, you don’t want your precious furniture to get a little damp?”

“What?” It was silent when it came for Kyle’s turn to talk; he hadn’t realized what he just said.

“Nothing, I’ll just take those clothes.” Paul handed him a pair of black sweat pants and a Notre Dame sweatshirt from the closet.

“Yo, I’ll be right back. My mom made some pasta thing tonight that was really good and there are some leftovers; want me to bring you up some?”

“No thanks, I’m not hungry,” Kyle responded. However, Kyle hadn’t eaten at all that day and was starving, but he didn’t want to be a bother. Plus, he needed some time to be alone in Paul’s house.

Paul walked downstairs and turned on the lights to his kitchen; his mom and dad must have already fallen asleep. He took a Tupperware container out of the refrigerator and put it in his microwave for a minute. Afterwards, he started back upstairs to his room. The hallway felt like having a fever on a 98 degree summer day; “Strange,” Paul thought. When arriving to his bedroom door, he began to turn the lukewarm doorknob, which gave him funny thoughts as well. He opened the door and Kyle wasn’t inside, however his trash can was caught on fire and had been tipped over. Frantically, Paul ran to his bed and lifted the blankets and sheets from it and tried to damper out the controllable flames before they spread. However, the blanket caught on fire. Within seconds, the entire room was enveloped in flames. Kyle was outside of the house watching Paul’s window glow like a nectarine. Soon, the entire top floor of the Berryman’s home was caught on fire. Kyle was relieved that the storm and rain had died down; it would make the walk home a lot easier. 

It was 1:13 in the morning and there lied Laura Lee under her covers, awoken by a creepy knock at her apartments door. As the alarm clock turned to 1:18 she finally crept out of her slumber in order to get an idea as to who was at her door at this hour. While passing through her kitchen she picked up a knife for good measure and safety purposes. She approached the door right as the person knocked again, sending a shake through her already trembling body like a Richter-scaled earthquake.

“Wh-…,” Laura Lee could barely get her words out. “Who is it?”

“Laura Lee Thompson, it’s the police. Please open up, we would like to have a word with you.”

“Uhm… Uh… What is this about?” Laura Lee asked.

“Ma’am, just please open up the door.”

With the approval of the peephole in her front door, she realized it actually was the police. Before opening the door she replaced the knife back to the kitchen drawer and then briskly returned to the door and allowed the officers in.

“Evening… Morning… Officers…,” Laura Lee stuttered out.

“What seems to be the matter?”

“Well, Ms. Thompson, I’m Officer McClure,” one of the officers said as she shook her hand.

“I’m Officer Reynolds, sorry for waking you,” assured the other. “How long have you been home for?” asked Officer Reynolds.

“Um… I’ve been here since about eleven… What is this about?” Laura Lee questioningly asked.

McClure spoke up, “Ma’am, where were you prior to that?”

“Oh, I was at work all day. I had to work overtime today. I was there from ten yesterday morning until ten at night… Twelve hours… it was a long day.”

“Eh, sounds long,” said McClure. “Where do you work?”

“Berryman’s Lamination Factory,” she answered. There was silence. “It’s off of route-48 while going west towards…”

Officer Reynolds cut her off, “Yes, we know where it is. So, you worked for Arnold Berryman?”

“What do you mean ‘worked’?” Laura Lee hesitantly asked.

Officer McClure walked towards the answering machine, “Ms. Thompson, you have a message; care to hear it?”

“Sure, play it, its probably my mom again,” replied Laura Lee. “So, what did you mean by ‘worked’ for Arnold Berryman?” The officers noticed a twitch in Laura Lee’s voice.

The answering machine then captured everyone’s attention:

“Hello, Laura Lee Thompson. This is Arnold Berryman. I know you worked a twelve hour shift today but I’m going to need you to come into work at ten again tomorrow morning. I’ll see you then.”

Once again, there was silence in the room. Then, suddenly, Officer McClure approached Laura Lee with handcuffs.

“Laura Lee Thompson…” Reynolds began to state while wrapping the metallic circles around Laura Lee’s wrists.

“Oh god,” thought Laura Lee. “Oh god… what happened?”

“You are under arrest for the murder of Arnold Berryman and his family. You have the right to remain silent…” Laura Lee’s mind escaped herself before she could hear Officer Reynolds read her the rest of her rights.

“Your brown, 1983 Ford pickup was spotted around 10:30 tonight outside of Arnold Berryman’s home, right before it was burnt to the ground. You are under arrest, Ms. Thompson,” repeated officer McClure.