It was a cold night. Not historically cold or even stereotypically cold given how goddamn freezing it can get around these parts but just objectively and objectionably cold. I hate it when people dismiss temperatures in the 20s (that’s Fahrenheit, obviously) as “not that bad”–Fuck you, when condensation chills to a solid, it’s fair to say that my teeth would be chattering if I “braved” the elements wearing just umbros and blue and orange chest paint. Even inside this car, especially since the heat didn’t seem to be working in this clearly purchased at a police auction used crown vic.

I wondered if it would start to snow. The forecast didn’t call for it, but what did those meteorologists know anyway? They didn’t know what the future holds, they couldn’t. They could never anticipate life’s little wrinkles, the well, not quite sliding doors but small moments that forever change not just your life but someone else’s. Maybe lots of someone elses’ lives. 

I had been staring out the window of the car and doing this kind of wondering for a while, waiting for a stranger to come out of a building on the outskirts of town. A small town, and one in which I’d never spent much time. But there I was, looking for snow that isn’t coming to fall from clouds that aren’t there, all the while steadfastly ignoring the two items clutched in my gloved hands.

In the left, a small crumpled piece of paper with another man’s instructions written on it. In the right, a small blade, slightly stained with the hints of that same man’s prior extracurricular activities.

I still don’t understand how he found me or why I said yes, but the calm in his voice from when he started with “I need you to take care of something for me” meant that I had already said the word “yes” before my head or heart could process what I was signing up for tonight.

“Here’s the deal–everyone wants him gone, including himself. This is what I do, I put people out of their misery. He has no family, no friends, no future. Sometimes all the world needs is an assist from guys like me to make things go just a little bit more quickly toward where they were already headed. There’s a car outside with everything you need in it, including a little thank you present for yourself. Look, I can’t do it tonight. Trust me, I wish I could.”

That last sentence chilled me to the bone. Two things were clear–First, that someone was going to kill this poor sap in due time and second, that the man asking me to “fill in” for him clearly reveled in this type of cleansing that most reviled.

“How do I even know it’s the right guy?” was the only question I could muster.

The stranger glowered at me as if it was an idiotic question.

“There’s an address in the car. No one, and I mean literally no one else, will be there. Like I said, he has no one and nothing in his life. And he’s a man of routine. He likes his solitude and then exactly once per day, he exits for a few hours and then returns to his loneliness for the night.”

And then he walked away. As I replayed the conversation in my head, the look in the stranger’s eyes continued to haunt me. This crown vic, this blade, this victim–they were all so premeditated that everything had to have been rehearsed, right down to choosing me as the stand-in.

The appointed time neared and my heartbeat quickened. What were my options at this point? I could bail. Return the crown vic–with the cliched but splattered briefcase of loonies and twonies still in it–to the off airport parking lot and go about my day. I guess I could even keep the car and the coin but that didn’t seem wise. None of this seemed wise, least of all letting down the stranger with a penchant for hastening the exits of lost souls.

I had to go through with it, didn’t I? After all, everything was the way the stranger said it would be. Absolute silence and solitude, a single car parked in an isolated corner of an already sparsely populated town outside of the less than booming metropolis of Green Bay. If this target, this fancy hobo, really was a sad sack looking for a way out, maybe a mercy killing with modest renumeration was the right play. 

The blade seemed like an odd way to go, but the stranger was insistent–it HAD to be a blade, this blade. All I had to do was greet him–for a lost soul apparently he was quite friendly to strangers–and when he went to shake my hand, the shake would be replaced by the shank. Then I was to leave the body but make sure to place the blade back into the trunk of the crown vic and return to my business.

All of these thoughts floating and flowing, but not a flake of snow. Not a whit of activity–until the front door of the house cracked open.

I steeled the blade and my nerves and reached for the handle of the car door. And then I took another look at the man whose life I was expected to take.

I recognized him. And that’s when I knew I had to let him walk away and risk the wrath of the stranger from earlier in the day.

fin.

Tonight’s fare features the Green Bay Packers (7-3) hosting the Chicago Bears (5-5) with the starting quarterbacks being Aaron Rodgers and (triple checks notes) Mitch Trubisky.  As much as Bears fans hate Mitch, let’s take a look around at the smoldering remains of NFL rosters and see who else is starting at QB this week who sucks a whole lot more* than Mitch–

• Brandon Allen, who wasn’t even the Bengals back up but is allegedly a better option that Ryan Finley
• Mike Glennon, known giraffe
• Joe Flacco, elite dumpster fire Sam Darnold sucks, too
• Ryan Fitzpatrick, home to a family of birds
• Taysom Hill, the Mormon Kordell Stewart but with a lower ceiling and floor
• Carson Wentz, currently leading the league in INTs and rumored to be pulled out of today’s game for 2-3 plays at a time in favor of Jalen Hurts
• A backup running back or wide receiver for the Broncos
• Daniel Jones, who maybe is improving but still this
• Nick Mullens, Andy Dalton, Alex Smith…toss up?
• The tattered remains of Robert Griffin III, IF the Ratbirds game even happens at all, likely inside of a BSL IV facility

*Written before earlier slates kick off; if Royce Freeman or Kendall Hilton throw 3 TDs, suck it

The state of the NFL in COVID times is such that the Broncos petitioned the league to start an assistant coach at quarterback.

(But yeah, Kaep had been away from live game action for too long to have been a viable option two years ago).

Anyhoodles, as a Bears fan, I BEARLY noticed that the team was on a bye last week, might only watch a little bit of this game, and think that the Packers -8 is…overly optimistic. But it’s football between two teams technically in a battle for the division crown, so keep your wits about you, you never know when you might be called upon to fill in at quarterback…or where scotchy might be looming.

TO THE COMMENTING YOU GO!