For the Better

The sound of the hacksaw ripping through metal hurt Ron’s ears, yet he kept going. One of the two shotgun barrels fell to the ground with a clang, as the blade began tearing at the other. With an identical clang, it too fell to the ground, and Ron looked at the short, squat shotgun with fascination. “Hmm, not quite even.” The sound of the grinding wheel was worse than that of the saw, but yet again he went to work. Sparks flew and Ron, ignoring the shards of metal, kept grinding. Again he looked at the barrels and this time they were perfect. He ran his hand across the muzzle and nodded to himself with approval. He opened the gun at the middle and stared lovingly down the barrels of the 12 gauge. The two buck-shot shells slid smoothly into the gun and with a flick of the wrists, the gun snapped shut.
The mattress from the bed which he and his wife used to share, was propped up against the basement wall. He took aim and with a deafening roar, the shotgun tore the mattress to pieces. Tears began to sting his eyes as he thought of Kristen. With the back of his hand he wiped a tear off of his cheek and thought of the last time he had seen her.

**********
Ron sat at the small table in the middle of the kitchen sipping at his coffee and reading his news paper. The was like any other day; Ron would get up at the crack of dawn and get the coffee brewing, while Kristen got ready for work. But for some reason Ron had felt differently today. He didn’t know why, but for some reason the day seemed to be cursed. He brushed that feeling off when he saw Kristen come walking out of the tiny bedroom.
Her ebony hair move ever so slightly, as she glided over to the counter. Even after eight years of marriage, Ron couldn’t take his eyes off of her. Kristen’s short, curvy body filled out her waitress uniform nicely and needless to say, but Ron wasn’t looking at the news paper any more. He always wondered how he ever ended up with such a beautiful woman (as did his friends), but he did.
Ron never thought of himself as a great catch, but apparently Kristen did. Being her senior by six years hadn’t helped, not to mention the fact that he had started losing his hair at nineteen. Kristen always joked with him about having a very deep attraction for short, chubby, bald guys and after eight years he was starting to believe it. Until recently she was one of the most caring people he had ever met and was his best friend and it killed him inside that he couldn’t give her the one thing she always wanted, kids.
Twenty years ago, when Ron was sixteen, he was diagnosed with a rare form of testicular cancer. Emergency surgery was needed and he was never the same again. At the time, reproduction wasn’t such a big deal, but as he got older his plans had changed. He wanted children, but the doctors told him that having kids wasn’t in his future. Ron was crushed, as was Kristen, who wanted more than anything to be a mother. His infertility killed him every time he saw Kristen look at a new-born with yearning and disappointment.
Throughout the years Ron and Kristen had argued over adoption and foster care, or the fact that there maybe some medical procedure that would allow them to have a child, but it all ended the same; with heartache. All of their options required a lot of money, a commodity neither of them had. The issue had been placed on the back burner until recently when Kristen celebrated her thirtieth birthday. After her party the issue of children came up again, and again ended with the same results, except this time Kristen seemed different. She was more upset over the last argument then any other and Ron just thought she was unhappy about hitting the big three-o.
Kristen poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down at the table across from her husband. She was staring blankly out the window when Ron asked, “So who are you working with today?” Kristen didn’t budge, she just kept her gaze locked on the window.
Ron touched her arm and she jumped.
“What?” she asked.
“I was just wondering who you were working with today?” She looked at him with a puzzled glare.
“I don’t know, probably that klutz Anna. Ya know she dropped five dishes last week and Chris still hasn’t fired her ass. Ya know what it is don’t ya?”
‘O shit,’ thought Ron. ‘Here it comes.’
“She’s pregnant, again. God damn skank needs to keep her legs closed.” She took a swallow of the hot coffee and continued her tirade. “Chris lets her get away with everything because of her ‘delicate situation’ as he puts it. Ya know it’s just not fair that at piece of white trash, like her can have so many kids, yet we, who work so hard and are good people, can’t have one.”
Ron looked down at his coffee and tried to ignore Kristen’s glare that he could feel boring into his skull. He looked up at her and whispered, “I’m sorry.”
She gave him a cold look, the worst he’s ever received from her, and said, “you should be.” Kristen looked at her watch, grumbled something under her breath about the bus and stormed out. Ron bit his lip as he fought back tears. He wanted nothing more than to make Kristen happy and he thought he always had, until now.
Ron had no time for tears, he had to get to work. He cleared the coffee cups and went into the bedroom to get dressed.
The temperature was supposed to hit ninety-eight today, so that meant he would have a relatively busy day.
Ron was an ice-cream man, a summer job he started over ten years ago. After he dropped out of college; Ron had no idea what he wanted to do with his life. So over the summer he took odd jobs, in order to pay for the weed and beer he so readily consumed. He tried it all, from landscaping to telemarketing, but nothing seemed to click. Until one day when he found his ideal job, ice-cream man. It was perfect, he was in an air-conditioned truck all day, and when he had the munchies, a snack was never far away. In the beginning, the major downside was all the kids he had to deal with. He absolutely hated kids, but after some time he began to like them. This sudden liking of children made him upset over the fact that he could never produce any, but at least he could be around children.
So for the past ten years, Ron has been the resident ice-cream man in the little town of Melville, Texas. As he got dressed, he admired the little icon of Vanilla Vinny, an ice-cream cone with arms and legs, on the front of his shirt. Vanilla Vinny was an known icon in this part of town and when ever someone saw that stupid ice-cream cone, they knew that you worked for Shivering Steve’s ice-cream and frozen treats.
Ron finished buttoning up his shirt and walked out the front door. He got into the family car, a 1992 Honda Civic sedan (which was the biggest piece of shit on the block) and the engine came to life with a cough and a sputter.
The car stopped in the parking lot of Shivering Steve’s at ten a.m. and Ron got into his new ride for the day, a modified Chevy van meant for carrying the cold stuff. He saw the thermometer on the side of his ice-cream truck and watched as the mercury touched ninety. He sighed and started the truck. The cheesy music played and as Ron drove out into the world, he thought of what a long day this was going to be.

**********
Ron pulled into the driveway of his and Kristen’s tiny house, at around nine-thirty. He walked in the front door and tossed his keys on the table. “Kris?” his deep voice echoed throughout the small house. “Kris, are you here?” He walked over to the fridge and grabbed a beer. Ron cracked open his beer and realized the note attached to the refrigerator door. His hands began to tremble as he read it:
Ron,
This is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do or say, so I will make it as fast as possible. I feel as if there is a void in my life and for the longest time I thought I was imagining it but recently I realized that this void was real. Now that I am thirty, this void has grown deeper and darker than ever and I now know that you will never be able to fill this chasm in my soul. Ron, I want children, I need children. I always have and always will and you can’t help me with that. So, I’ve decided to find someone who can. Someone who can give me what I want, and who isn’t ‘broken’. I’m sorry, but I’ve felt like this for quite sometime now and I can’t live the lie any longer. Good luck to you and all that you do and remember that this is for the better.
Kristen
The letter fell from his hands and floated to the floor. Ron stood there in shock, millions of emotions and thoughts running through his head, until finally they manifested themselves. Tears fell freely as he rampaged through the house. He flipped over the table and shattered the chairs against the walls. Ron’s agonizing screams burst from his lungs, until he thought he would explode. Love, anger, hate, jealousy, sadness, rage all ripped at him and his mind, until he couldn’t stand it anymore. His world had just collapsed on him and this violent onslaught of emotions was destroying his sanity. Ron’s tornado like behavior continued, as he destroyed anything and everything he could. When he entered the bedroom he flipped over the mattress and boxboard and as he was about to turn his attention on something else, he stopped. Underneath the bed was a long case, which had been long since forgotten. Ron knelt down and placed his hands on the clasps. They opened with a soft click and he gazed at what lay inside; a side-by-side double barrel, twelve gauge shotgun. It was his father’s gift to him for his eighteenth birthday and along with a box of shells, has been under the bed for about six years.
Ron slide his fingers across the smooth, cold steel of the barrels. His sanity was deteriorating at an alarming rate and madness began to seep into his skull.
“I hate them,“ he whispered. Ron began to breath deeply and made his lungs fill to capacity with every breath. His breathing was getting deeper and deeper and spit began to fly from his lips. “I fucking hate them!“ he screamed. Ron’s hatred for children was coming back rapidly. He just kept thinking of all of their smiling faces and grubby hands and jealous hatred fill him to the point of bursting. O what he would’ve given to have had one of them call him ‘daddy’ or to come home with a scraped knee so he could make it all better. The jealous rage was consuming him and heinous thoughts entered his head, but they did not leave. Ron grabbed the mattress from the floor and threw it down the basement stairs. He grabbed the shotgun and a pocket full of shells and went downstairs. Ron grabbed the hacksaw from the wall and began to saw.

**********
Ron sat on the couch, the shotgun in his lap and a beer in his hand. His ears were still ringing from the shots he put into the mattress and if he had any neighbors within a quarter of a mile, they’d be able to hear his T.V. The volume on the T.V. was at the max and Ron could still barely hear the gay jokes that Conan O’Brian was making. It didn’t matter any way, he wasn’t paying attention to the show, he was just thinking about tomorrow.

**********
Ron stuffed the shotgun, which was now about three feet long, into his pants when he got to work. He put on a façade and said hi to his fellow ice-cream men, as he made his way to his truck. The music started and off he went, into the world to change the lives of some unlucky people forever.
Now that summer was beginning, the elementary schools were operating on half days and around the first corner Ron turned, was a mob of dirty kids. They were yelling and waving their crumpled dollars in the air as if he were a stripper, with mommy and daddy watching to make sure little Suzie or little Johnny didn’t run into the street. Well Suzie and Johnny, mommy and daddy can’t save you now. The truck rolled to a stop and the flashing signs came out of the side of the truck. Ron took a deep breath, opened the shotgun, dropped in two rounds of buckshot and opened the roll door on the side of the truck. He had the gun on a little counter, right out of the kids view, but very easily accessible. Ron listened as kids screamed their orders at him. God, with every word they spoke, he hated them that much more. Every word made him want to spray their little brains all over the sidewalk and onto mommy’s blouse.
He grabbed the shotgun with a grip so tight he could feel his knuckles going white. Something must’ve happened to his face, maybe that went white also, but the kids stopped yelling their orders at him and just starred. Ron pulled back both hammers on the gun. Some of the kids began walking back to their parents, and as a tear ran down his cheek, Ron pulled the shotgun from underneath the counter. The kids froze in shear disbelief and terror as Ron put both barrels in his mouth.
As the taste of cold steel sat on his tongue he could see the horrified faces of the parents. He pulled the trigger on the gun and just before the steel buckshot painted the interior of the truck with his brains, he thought, ‘this is for the better.’