Mutilated Teddy Bear

Mutilated Teddy Bear (1st draft: unedited)

At the knock on the front door they were alarmed yet it was nothing more than that startling of an unexpected knock. They were fairly quiet and kept to themselves although they lived on a busy street littered with cars and kids. However, the routine emotions one feels while answering a knock at the door soon dissipated and was replaced with a hot steel sweat that seemingly started in the pit of their stomachs and moved to the back on their throats as they greeted two police officers at the front door.

"Mr. & Mrs. Krugglick?" the officer began and with a nod from the couple he proceeded, "may we come in?"

The tiny kitchen table showed no signs of a troubled home. It was quite non descript and looked like several kitchen tables on that street, in the neighborhood of the city of Boston, Massachusetts.

They missed the signs. No doubt about it. They missed the signs. Were they to blame for it?

While the white glove dust tests were conducted in the household every Saturday morning cleaning-up the evidence that time indeed past and dust settled with its mixture of skin particles, mites, dirt & grime for the everyday inside & outside did they miss the real focus and meaning behind the horrible violent crimes the officers blatantly stated their 25 year old son committed? All those victims. And the poor grieving families & friends!

Mrs. Krugglick dismissed the incessant teasing her son gave the family pets as just a normal aggressiveness that boys did – even when there were signs of wounds from abuse and an uneasy wincing from rooms when he was in them with the animals. For it was only a recent phenomenon to let animals in the house to begin with and may not have even occurred if Mr. Krugglick did not take heed to the advice of a Mason on the street that explained how his connections told him that Mr. Krugglick would probably have to face some fines associated with animal & pet abuse and neglect if he didn't make certain the animals were more properly looked after and not roaming free day and night – or the dogs just chained in the backyard in all weather barking frantically at times as if to fend off attacks and also from apparent lack of fresh food and water. Cambridge was shedding its working class image for a more white collar "tech" friendly environment. The Krugglicks like many other families were caught in the middle of this shuffle – which might explain the bullying their son received from both sides of the track – with his inadequacies of not being cool, or tough enough for one side and not good-enough & status confirmed by the other.

At any rate, while they searched the bedroom with the officers both Mr. & Mrs. Krugglick shed hot tears of shame and misfortune and guilt as Mrs. Krugglick grasped at, held, and squeezed the mutilated teddy bear the officers pulled out of the closet and from the childhood of the mass killer.