Criminal

Flash Fiction

The ankle monitor made him itch too often.

It was on his left leg, the limping leg, the leg that drew attention to itself.

The limp was especially noticeable on stairs without banisters.

He made it to the top of these stone stairs only wobbling a few times.

The door was old, wooden, heavy.

Through a very similar door, he had once heard “Of course he does. He has the kind of extreme intellect that incubates insanity.”

He had never been sure what the of course referred to. Could have been many things, all negative. He was sixteen at the time.

Some other things he had seen in print: 

“Prone to rages.” 

“Borderline sociopathic.”

He had been working on the rage thing.

The system, if it even worked well enough to be called a system, was working on itself too.

Dornemon, his PO, had even gone as far as telling him that though the program was through a vocational grant, he hoped it would be therapeutic and enjoyable.

He showed his ID and his paperwork to the security desk, holding in that simmering nervousness that anyone with a badge could tell him no.

Security smiled pleasantly and sent him down the hall.

He had spent one year at a university like this one. 18 credit hours, spotless attendance, all A’s, prone to rages.

He told himself that the figure model would be a male theatre adjunct, bearded, in shape but not perfect, above average sized penis, one tattoo.

A woman looked down as he walked and he wondered how visible the tether was under his pant leg.

No, he knew how visible it was. He wondered if she knew what it was.

If he could explain why it was.

If he could tell his life story without making one excuse.

But he wasn’t here to talk. 

He was here to draw.

The figure model was a woman.

Mid-sixties, he guessed.

Necklace that fit her throat almost perfectly, a small emerald cylinder for a charm.

Sandpapery skin at her knees as though she gardened or something similar.

Maybe she just crawled around on her hands and knees playing with her grandchildren.

The robe came off without fanfare or hesitation.

The model had a double mastectomy.

She leaned back comfortably, smiled pleasantly.

After he outlined her body, head to toe, he began to draw her eyes and the wrinkles underneath them.

He wanted to ask her out.

Ask her her life story.

See if he could count the excuses.

But the tether on his leg demanded he be in his apartment twenty minutes after the session was over.

He would have time to express his desire to speak to her, and nothing more. He would have to make an excuse.

She had an exquisite navel he thought, though the thought wasn’t particularly therapeutic, or relaxing. 

***

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