Mr. Quick, Part 1

He enters almost silently. If it wasn't for the electronic entrance buzzer on the front door, Rick may never have heard him at all. It was the way he rolled his feet when he walked in his thin soled sneakers. The rythem of his movement forward with no hesitation as to where his next step was going to be placed. The man never stopped moving, only gently slowed his motion or sped it up. He moved like a rolling summer breeze but at 2AM on a Wednesday, a breeze can sound like a hurricane, and the motion detector sounds like a demon's steel nails on a paper thin blackboard. Draped in a black long trench coat, he has a jarring visual presence in this small quiet town, where everyone dresses down the middle except for the "artistic" teenagers waiting to break free from the mundane and "shallow water" of Percy, Massachusetts.

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Richard Barrington had bought the 24 hour convenience store after a weak attempt at the college in the next town, and a failed attempt at a girlfriend named Jessie and a "Rick's Tire Emporium". At the time, the idea seemed all too natural to him. Those days; Richard stayed up very late perusing awful TV, half-heartedly hacking at crossword puzzles, and trying not to think about the past that was haunting him at night after his day job as a low level manager at Midas Muffler.

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Haunting him when everything was quiet. So very quiet.

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The idea arrived on one of those cold March nights when winter has started to create a dynasty of frigid despair on your psychosis and the hope of a slightly warmer spring still seems so very far away. That night; Richard had found himself in a 1000 yard stare with the Ronco Rotissere informercial and thus, nearly ran out of his small house, slid into the seat of his Chevy Silverado and juiced up the V8 at slightly past 1:30 AM. He let it warm while he was thinking where his post-midnight "joy ride for the borderline depressed" would take him. Nothing had come to mind when what was once frost, was now steaming vapor on his windsheild. He put it in "R" and backed out onto Jessica Way (a horrible coincidence), pulled the shift into the pro-active "D" slot and proceeded to go wherever his right foot and hands took him into town.

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