Poison - A Short Story

(Note: This is a short story I wrote for a new site that is publishing short stores online. This one was longer than the 1500 word limit, so I thought I'd "publish" it here. Let me know if you enjoy it.)

Wally Huddleston, a thirty something, balding, terrible excuse for a man, sat in his cocoon like cubicle at the Americas Insurance Company, munching his twenty fifth potato chip. He knew it was the twenty fifth because he counted his food as he consumed it, obsessing over every bite, every crumb, every swallow. Wally was overweight and given his love of food and the pleasure it contained, would probably be so for the rest of his life. Besides, if people didn’t like him the way he was, then he figured they could just take a flying leap.

Wally’s love affair with food, the only affair he was ever likely to have, was all he really had in his life. He hated his work, wasn’t too fond of his fellow workers, disliked his life, or lack of it, and with one exception, despised everyone he met. The one exception, the one bright spot in Wally’s drab and pointless life, was Becky Pearce, who worked five cubicles down from Wally’s and whom he thought was the most beautiful woman in the world. Becky, of course, had no idea Wally had any feelings for her, as they rarely exchanged more than simple greetings, and even then, Wally would never look at her as he mumbled good morning to her. She had smiled at him on the day she started at Americas and from that day on, Wally was in love.

Becky’s bubbly personality and infectious laugh had won over all the men at Americas from the very first day she set foot in the drab halls of the Americas Insurance Company, perched on the 65th floor of the Allen building. The fact that she was drop dead gorgeous, added to her popularity with the men on her floor, with Wally, no exception to her siren call.

He would often fantasize about her and what their life together could be, how she would dote on his every word, bringing him his slippers as he returned from work, fixing him fabulous meals after which they would make mad, passionate love for hours, and how she would coo soft words of love into his ear afterwards. He could see himself combing his fingers through her long, blonde hair, pushing it away from her flawless, tanned skin. He kissed her forehead and touched her large, blue eyes, softly caressing her eyelids, marveling at her long, full lashes as they touched his finger tips. He sat back and looked at her, soaking in her beauty, admiring her taut, athletic figure, her long, perfectly formed legs, her small feet with designs painted on her toenails. He loved every perfect inch of her, everything worthy of admiration.

Wally was in the midst of one of his fantasies, when Larry Rissen swung around the cubicle opening and grabbed the bag of chips Wally was saving for after lunch.

"You don’t need these, do you Puddlebutt?" Larry said, opening the bag and grabbing a chip. He had started calling Wally, Huddlebutt, but morphed it further from his name into Puddlebutt. Wally viewed Larry as the most obnoxious, foul person to ever walk the earth, but was afraid to say anything to Larry as he was large, fit and, in Wally’s opinion, extremely aggressive.

Larry had made a point of taking some of Wally’s food every day, explaining that he was just trying to help Wally lose some weight and that Wally should be thanking him for his trouble. Wally, of course, didn’t see Larry’s thievery as any kind of help and had even thought of filing a complaint, going so far as to fill out the form and stick it in an envelope. The envelope sat on his desk for two weeks before he finally threw it in the trash. He binged on an entire cherry cheese cake and two dozen cookies to celebrate his spineless lack of courage.

"Why bother asking?" Wally responded.

"No hard fellings, huh Puddlebutt?" Larry said as he wandered off down the hall of cubicles.

"Right, no hard feelings," Wally mumbled under his breath, the sarcasm dripping.

That was the day Wally started planning Larry’s death. There was more to the rivalry between Wally and Larry than the food pilfering. Wally, having overheard the braggart talking to some coworkers about what he wanted to do with her, knew Larry had designs on Becky. Wally had tried to defend her.

"That’s not the way you should talk about a woman," he had said, looking down at his shoes as soon as he spoke.

"What does someone like you know about talking about a woman," Larry had said, derisively. "Come on, give us the benefit of your many years of experience with the fairer sex, Puddlebutt" he had added, laughing and slapping one of the other men on the shoulder.

Wally’s anger boiled up inside him, but he said nothing.

"Well now, look at Puddlebutt get all red," Larry had said, mockingly. "Maybe we should all stand back before he blows!"

Wally hurried back to his cubicle and opened a bag of Fritos and filled his mouth with a hand full. Somehow, he vowed, he would get even with Larry for all the times he’d been humiliated and bullied by the blowhard. Somehow, but how? Wally was not the perfect specimen of manhood one would envision when thinking of an avenging angel to go and do battle with the evil that is in the world. He had a massive comb over, held in place by a combination of pomade and hair spray, dark, heavy rimmed glasses that were best described as Coke bottle bottoms. His mass was centered at his belt line, pushing the limits of what anyone could expect from any belt, and all this was set on a five six frame, balanced on small, flat feet.

Wally planned. He planned the rest of the day and well into the night. His plan was foolproof; one that would offer him relief from the bullying and the incessant teasing, and with the bonus of no one knowing he was the instrument of death. His precise research was finished and all he had left to do was implement the plan. He began the following Saturday.

Wally rushed around the city gathering the various parts essential to making his plan work. The first item, a syringe, was readily available in the dumpster in the alley behind Wally’s apartment building where the junkies gathered to shoot up all sorts of nasty things into their veins. His next item was more difficult to find and purchase. It required extensive research and even more correspondence, but, in the end, was the key to making the plan work. Wally had emailed a small research facility in Caractao, Brazil, requesting a sample of the excretion from the p. terriblis , or more commonly known as the poison dart frog. He explained he was a scientist working on a medicinal use for the poison, going into sufficient detail that they agreed to send a vile of the poison. They explained that the poison was extremely toxic, resulting in a gruesome, ugly death withing seconds of ingestion. Wally explained he was aware of the deadliness of the toxin, but was willing to take the risk. He had them send the secretion via next day mail, costing him an entire week’s pay, but, in his mind, well worth the cost. He now had all the ingredients to make his plan work. The following Wednesday, he was ready to implement the villainous project.
Wally was up early, rushing around his small apartment, preparing the bait - a banana - chosen for its ability to mask the slight odor and taste of the poison. He was almost giddy as he went about his preparation, humming as he injected the frog secretion into the banana, laughing at one point as he imagined Larry eating the banana and instantly falling to the floor, foaming at the mouth, contorted in pain. He tried to act as natural as possible as he entered the office and walked to his cubicle. He sat the banana in a conspicuous place on the end of his desk, anticipating Larry’s arrival. He didn’t have to wait long.

Larry walked up to the opening of Wally’s cubicle.

"Say, Puddlebutt, whatcha got for breakfast? How about this banana? You don’t need it, do you?"

Wally didn’t want to seem to anxious for Larry to take the banana so he started to protest.
"Yeah, I do want it, Larry," he said, not looking at Larry.

"So do I, it will make a great gift," Larry said, grabbing the banana and walking off toward the common area.

"Fine," Wally said, under his breath, a faint smile on his thin, purple lips, "Very fine, indeed. Consider it a gift then"

Wally sat back in his chair and waited for the event he had waited and planned for. He didn’t have to wait long. He heard a scream. He jumped up and headed toward the common area, trying to look surprised and interested so as not to draw any suspicion towards himself. Suddenly, he stopped. Jutting from behind a desk, on the floor, were the legs of Becky. He knew they were hers because of her shoes, the little red pumps she always wore with the blue pinafore and white stockings. He knew most people by their shoes since he was always looking down rather than in people’s eyes. No question, it was Becky. Larry must have meant the banana was a gift for her, not him. Wally had killed the one thing in his life with any meaning.

He turned away from the death scene and walked out of the large room into the hall and up the stairs to the roof where he usually ate his lunch. He walked around the hulking air conditioning unit, where he customarily sat in the shade, directly to the edge of the building. He never hesitated, he just stepped off the edge and fell.

The tickle in his stomach stopped after about fifty feet. For the rest of the fall, Wally was calm, finding the rapidity of the descent mesmerizing. The ground approached much faster than he had anticipated and he covered the eight hundred and five feet in just a few seconds, smashing into the cement just behind two women in town early to miss the rush of the other shoppers. He didn’t feel a thing, finding death the instant he hit. He bounced once then landed in a messy heap, surrounded by blood and brains and other gooey stuff that comes our of a body when it suddenly stops and nearly explodes.

No one understood why he jumped. Certainly it couldn’t be the unexplained and sudden death of Larry Rissen, or the fainting collapse of Becky Pearce as she witnessed the ugly death of Larry. It was just one of those unexplained mysteries. And wasn’t it a shame.