“ Babe! Where the hell are the fishing poles?” shouted as he ransacked the garage.
“ Exactly where you left them!” His wife Beverly answered as she watched from the doorway.
“ Where was that?” Russel asked. He brushed by his wife as he headed towards the basement.
“ Check the basement!” his wife called from the doorway to the garage.
“ That’s where I’m going right now!” Russel shouted as he headed down the stairs.
As soon as he arrived at the bottom of the stairs, he turned on the lights. He looked up to make sure the door was closed, and his wife wasn’t watching him. Sure, that she had gone, he headed over to the water heater. He reached around and carefully removed a loose piece of plywood that was in the wall.
Russel pulled out two collapsible fishing poles from the hole in the wall. Right after doing this, he reached inside once again. This time he pulled out a majestic black crossbow as well as a quiver of arrows.
He wrapped up the fishing poles tightly inside a dirty sheet that he found on top of his workbench. After securing these two items, he grabbed a blanket from underneath and wrapped up his crossbow and the arrows tightly. He looked around to make sure that everything was put back in the right place and made his way up the stairs.
“ Did you find the fishing poles?’ Beverly asked as soon as Russel opened the door.
“ You scared the shit out of me!” He said as he clutched his chest. His wife just stared at him with a look of disgust.
“ Yeah I got them!’” Russel replied as he walked towards his office.
“ What time are you leaving tomorrow and who are you going with?” Beverly asked. She stared at her husband with her hands on her hips holding a moist dishrag.
“ Early! Eric and Monte!” Russel answered as he slammed the door to his office closed.
As soon as he got inside his office, he grabbed his cellphone which was sitting on top of his desk. He found Monte’s number and called him.
“ Hey! It’s me,” Russel said over the phone. “ No she thinks we are still going fishing,” he added. Russel listened to Monte for a couple of minutes before he answered his questions.
“ Who said anything about murder? I got his name from one of the computer geeks I work with,” he explained. Russel listened to Monte talk again but interrupted him before he finished.
“ I told you I’m not going to kill him. I just want to make sure that this son of a bitch understands what happens when you send dirty pictures over the internet to an underaged girl,” Russel said. He paused and listened to Monte one more time.
“Eric’s not coming? That’s probably for the best, I don’t think he could stomach any of this. So I will pick you up at 6 AM tomorrow morning. We’ll go and grab a cup of coffee and something to eat before we give this son of a bitch a rude awakening,” Russel said as he chuckled.
He jumped as he heard the click of the door handle. He turned to see his wife standing in the doorway. “ Is it your mission in life to scare me into having a heart attack?”
“Yeah. I should have told you at the wedding. You talking to your girlfriend?” She asked.
“ Yeah she’s coming tomorrow and Eric isn’t. I don’t know if I told you that she is blind. So Monte and I are going to have to make sure she doesn’t fall off the boat while she’s fishing,” Russel explained.
“ Where’s her seeing eye dog?”
“ He’s at the groomers so we’re on our own with this one,” her husband answered with a smile.
“ Smartass. Go tell your daughter that dinner is ready,” His wife ordered as she turned around and headed back to the kitchen.
Russel left his office and slowly made his way towards his daughter’s room. The door was slightly open. He took advantage of this and popped his head inside the door. “ Hey! Who the hell are you talking to on that computer! Turn it off! Dinner is ready!”
“ I’m not talking to anyone, I’m just finishing my homework!” His daughter Linda replied. She shut her laptop and stuffed it underneath her pillow.
The next morning arrived, and Russel was out the door before his wife knew he was gone. He drove to Monte’s house and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw his friend standing in front of his house holding his fishing pole and his lunch cooler.
“ You miss the bus?” Russel yelled out the window.
“ Kiss my ass!” Monte replied as he boarded his friend’s oversized truck.
“ Did you get a new truck?” His friend asked.
“ No, why?”
“ It just seems bigger than the last time you picked me up. It cost about three hundred dollars in gas to get here?” Monte asked while he sneezed four times in a row.
“ God bless you! Jeez! What the hell is wrong with you?” Russel asked.
“ Allergies,” Monte replied.
“ I think before we get a cup of coffee we are going to go on the trails so I can do a little target practice,” Russel said.
“ Wouldn’t it be easier to just scare him with a gun?”
“ You know I’m not allowed to own a gun,” Russel replied in a disdainful tone.
“ Oh yeah, I forgot,” Monte answered.
Russel made his way to the edge of the woods near the entrance to the highway. He parked and walked around to the back of his truck and grabbed his crossbow and quiver of arrows. They both walked far enough into the woods near a clearing.
“ You know I fired one or two of those in my time,” Monte said.
“ Really,” Russel answered sounding profoundly unimpressed.
“ Yeah really,” Monte said confidently.
“ Show me,” Russel asked as he handed his friend the crossbow and arrows. Monte smiled as he accepted the weapon. He took it out and managed to successfully insert the arrow into the crossbow.
“ Like this right?” Monte couldn’t finish the rest of the sentence before he launched into a sneezing fit. In the midst of this sudden onset of sneezing, he inadvertently fired the crossbow. He heard a squishy sounding thump. After his last sneeze, he looked over at Russel.
He was lying dead on the trail with the arrow sticking out of his throat surrounded by an expanding pool of blood. Monte cried out and fell to his knees while he burst into tears.