Front Lawns and Madness

One man's desire to have the nicest front lawn on the block turns into a dangerous obsession that drives him to the edge.

Front Lawns and Madness

 

Virgil November had one dream: to have the best front lawn in his neighborhood, a simple dream for a simple man. Virgil never had much and never wanted much, except for that picture perfect front lawn. At night, sleeping in his lonely three bedroom house on his middle class suburban block, Virgil dreamt of his lawn, a lovely lush, lofty piece of land comprised of full and closely cropped emerald green blades of grass. The more often the dream occurred the more real it grew. Until Virgil swore he could smell the freshly cut dream lawn as it simmered beneath the scorching summer sun.

            Unfortunately, Virgil’s real lawn paled in comparison to his dream lawn. Its not that Virgil’s real lawn looked bad, lord knows he spent countless hours watering it by hand, spreading fertilizer and pulling unsightly weeds, but it could never compare to his neighbor Bill Bur’s lawn. In Virgil’s opinion, Bill Bur’s lawn was the lawn to beat. A remarkable piece of landscaping, Bill’s lawn never wavered in its beauty. Always well kempt, never displaying weeds or brown spots. Perhaps Virgil could have stomached living in the shadow of Bill’s lawn had they not lived directly across the street from one another, forcing Virgil to look out his bedroom window every morning to face the best patch of gardening in the neighborhood.

           This was how Virgil lived his miserable life, always jealous of the lawn across the street, always dreaming of the day when his lawn would take the crown and the entire neighborhood would stand in awe of its beauty. Parents would pass by with rosy cheeked children on crisp weekday mornings on their way to school and say, “Look Timmy that’s Virgil Novembers lawn, isn’t it  swell?”

Virgil lived this sad existence for what seemed like a millennium, until one day he finally decided he couldn’t take it any longer. The countless weekends spent laboring beneath the blistering sun, pushing his heavy mower back and forth across the grass, carefully manicuring the corners and edges with his high end Sears clippers, as sweat poored down his face, simply became too much. Like Sisyphus pushing the boulder up the hill, Virgil appeared cursed to remain inferior to Bill Bur and his precious lawn. It seemed that every single time Virgil moved ahead Bill and his lawn managed to knock him down a peg to that dread second place. If Virgil pulled a weed, Bill pulled five. If Virgil fertilized his lawn every other Saturday, Bill fertilized his lawn every Saturday. If Virgil filled his OSH gas can, Bill filled five.

Eventually, Virgil grew suspicious of Bill. After all, Bill only gardened once a week. “But that can’t be,” though Virgil, “I’m out here every day and I can’t seem to win. He must be cheating. That’s it! But how? He must be gardening at night when no one else is around to see. This way not only does he have the best lawn, but he can make it appear effortless. What an obsessive freak! I’ll show him!”And thus began Virgil’s night time lawn care endeavors folloed by a subtle descent into madness.

Beneath the magnificent milky white moon, Virgil now labored from sun up to sun down, only breaking from 9:00 am to 8:00 pm to go to work  in order to avoid arousing suspicion. For weeks Virgil neglected sleep, skipped meal and slowly severed the few social relationships in his life in order to devote himself mind body and soul to the lawn. But after three weeks of this tiring project nothing changed. No matter what, Bill’s lawn remained supreme. For the first time in his life Virgil found himself truly heartbroken. “I’ve labored worked so hard and still I can’t win!” wined Virigil alone in his bedroom one Saturday afternoon, as he gazed upon Bill throwing a football back and forth with his youngest son on their lovely lawn. “Why? How can this be? He must be sabotaging me. My God! That’s it! Bill is sneaking over here during the day while I’m at work at wrecking my lawn just enough to stay in the lead. B*****d! I’ll show him!”

            After that, Virgil stopped going to work, further fueling his flaming downward spiral into insanity. Now he used the hours from 8:00 am to 9:00 pm to sit in his room and keep a close eye on his lawn making sure the fowl play ceased. Until one day Virgil heard a knock at the door. To his surprise two police officers stood at his porch mentioning something about a series of complaints.

“What complaints!” snapped Virgil, looking completely emaciated from not eating or sleeping? 

“Some parents who walk their kids by your house on the way to school have called talking about a creepy man leering at the kids from his window. Tell me Mr. November have you ever been convicted of a crime?”

Surprisingly, Virgil responded rather peacefully to this line of questioning. Patiently, he explained that this was all a big misunderstanding and that he had been suffering from a bite of insomnia lately brought about by back spasms and that he liked to look out the window to pass the time as he iced his spine. Marginally satisfied with this response, the officers left warning that they would return if the complaints persisted. But Virgil knew there would be no more complaints because he knew the real source of this slander: Bill. “He manufactured this bald faced lie in order to further humiliate me and turn the whole neighborhood against me. This has gone too far. Someone has to take a stand against Bill and his f*****g w***e of a lawn."

            So the next day, in the wee hours of the early morning before sunrise, Virgil snuck across the street beneath the fading moonlight with his clippers and gas can in hand. He made sure to drench Bill’s lawn in the putrid smelling liquid before creating a trail of gas around the side of the house, into the backyard and through the kitchen window, which Virgil managed to gingerly open without making a peep.

            That morning Bill Bur awoke not to the sound of his alarm clock, but to the pungent stench that filled the bedroom he shared with his wife, Sarah. As his blurry vision came into focus he was startled to find his reclusive next door neighbor standing above him.

“Virgil! What the hell are you doing in my house?” said Bill as he lazily whipped the sleep out of his eyes. “What’s that smell? Is there a gas leak?” Bill grew more awake at this thought. “Are the kids okay?”
“You f****r!...” grumbled Virgil with a slight grin. “…you though you could get away with it, you and that b***h of yours out there!”

“What are you talking about?” asked Bill thoroughly confused.

“To late to try and apologize. It’s already done. I’m gonna win this time and I won’t let you take it away from me. Not again.”

As Bill moved to get out of bed and make his way to the phone, he noticed the blood soaked clippers in Virgil’s hand. With eyes fixed on the clippers in a semi-trance, Bill shook Sarah, who lay beside him, only to feel a suprising warm wet sensation on his hand. When he looked to his left, the horrific sight of his beloved wife’s mutilated corpse, basking in the glow of the morning sun, filled his eyes and soul. Her sliced open stomach overflowed with dislocated entrails. Her peaceful face still retained that demeanor of someone in the midst of a relaxing slumber, which stood in grotesque contrast to the deep slit in her neck which almost completely severed her head. By frantically shifting his weight on the mattress away from the hideous sight, Bill caused the body to role of the bed tearing itself loose from Sarah's head, which remained lieing on the pillow in a deep and endless sleep.  As Bill began to scream, Virgil hoisted the clippers above his head and brought them down, slicing deep into Bills gut straight through to the box spring beneath the mattress. The second stab crashed upon his crotch, effectively castrating the poor crying man. Virgil continued to stab him over and over and over again, until the body grew so drenched with blood that he could not find a fresh bit of flesh left to mangle.

As Bill choked down his last gurgle of blood filled breath, Virgil threw down the clippers, whipped the blood and guts from his gaunt skeleton like face and walked over to the bedroom window. Looking out across the street, his own lawn seemed so oddly far away. In fact, the distance appeared so vast he could hardly tell if it was his lawn or not. Than he gayly pulled a single match from his pocket, dragged its red tip along the windowsill causing it to ignite and dropped it on the gaudy gasoline soaked shag carpet.  As the flames engulfed Virgil, he took comfort in watching the incineration of his enemy’s lawn. “At last,” he thought, "people will walk by my lawn with their children and say, ‘isn’t it swell!’”

Author's Note

Ignore grammar problems. I'm looking for constructive criticism from fans of the disturbed.