Page 145 of Shhh…It’s A Killer Story

It hummed.

A low electrical whine that had probably driven the first owner mad before everyone else simply stopped hearing it.

Funny how people do that, live with something long enough and eventually your mind edits it out.

Thomas Miller never noticed it anymore.

He sat in his cracked leather office chair with his spectacles slipping down the greasy bridge of his nose, counting the Friday tills one receipt at a time. His thick fingers paused every few notes so he could wet his thumb before separating another bundle of bills.

Slow, methodical, respectable. To this town, Thomas Miller was a good man. He carried the church banner every Founder's Day. He repaired the high school bleachers without charging the district. He donated blankets every winter.

People loved men who fixed broken things.

Especially when those same men quietly ignored the broken people.

To me...

Thomas Miller was simply the man who closed the blinds. Every Friday. Eleven fifteen. Almost precise enough to set your watch by.

Harold Vance would drag his wife behind the hardware store by her hair while the gravel scraped the skin from her knees then came the belt always the fucking belt, the belt was a heavy brown leather with a brass buckle.

Thomas always heard the first scream.

I know he did because that's when the blinds moved. One twist of the little plastic wand.

Blind after blind.

Click.

Click.

Click.

Until the window became a wall, then he'd turn his radio up not loud enough to drown out the screaming, just loud enough to convince himself he couldn't hear it.

It's remarkable...

...how many innocent people spend their entire lives helping monsters not with knives not with fists just with silence.

Silence is terribly underrated...

Thomas finally noticed me when my shadow drifted over the ledger. His head lifted slowly, those thick glasses magnified his eyes just enough to make him look permanently surprised.

"Oh..."

A polite smile spread across his face.

"We're closed, sweetheart."

Sweetheart, what an interesting choice of words

I smiled back not because I was amused but because sometimes the kindest smile is the one people never see twice.

"I know," I said softly.

My voice barely rose above the hum of the fluorescent lights.

"I've actually been waiting for you to finish counting."