The Playground Adventure

by Kenneth James Crist

I have been watching my neighbor. He got my attention because he’s a fucking creep. I watch him hanging around the playground. Not hard to do, it’s right next to my house. Whenever there are cute little girls there, that’s when he walks that ratty little dog. Gets the kids to talk to him because of the dog. I know what he’s doing. He’s made a selection. She’s a little towhead and she’s about eight. Yesterday, he walked her partway home. Not all the way, no, that wouldn’t do. Mummy or Daddy might realize something’s wrong.

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This morning the police were over at her house. In short order, a second cop car, then a third. Cops walking the park, walking the neighborhood. Now, they have brought out the dogs. When they canvassed the neighborhood, I didn’t answer the door. I will take care of this my own way, after the cops have all left and moved on to the next call. Tonight, after it’s good and dark, my Glock and I will take a walk. I doubt he’s killed her yet, he hasn’t had time to enjoy her. I’m 81. What’s to lose?

Kenneth James Crist is Editor of Black Petals Magazine and is on staff at Yellow Mama ezine. He has been a published writer since 1998, having had almost two hundred short stories and poems in venues ranging from Skin and Bones and The Edge-Tales of Suspense to Kudzu Monthly. He is particularly fond of supernatural biker stories. He reads everything he can get his hands on, not just in horror or sci-fi, but in mystery, hardboiled, biographies, westerns and adventure tales. He retired from the Wichita, Kansas police department in 1992 and from the security department at Wesley Medical Center in Wichita in 2016. Now 81, he is an avid motorcyclist and handgun shooter. He is active in the American Legion Riders and the Patriot Guard, helping to honor and look after our military. He is the owner of Fossil Publications, a desktop publishing venture that seems incapable of making any money at all. His zombie book, Groaning for Burial, has been released by Hekate Publishing in Kindle format and paperback several years ago. On June the ninth, 2018, he did his first (and last) parachute jump and crossed that shit off his bucket list.

Luke Lester is an artist and writer from Victoria, Canada. He has recently been published in Paragraph Planet. Some of his writing and art can also be found on his blog: The Other Place.