• Aiden sat back in his seat and closed his eyes, letting the music carry him away. A warm head rested on his shoulder and he smiled as it twitched a little, a few loose strands of hair falling onto his chest.
    He wasn’t sure if she was awake, but Maddy was smiling too. This was their song, the one that had been playing on the radio when they had met at the dentists’ office almost two years ago, the one that came through the car stereo when they had first kissed, the one that played now as they sat enjoying each other’s company.
    They had been going out for two years now and were in the throes of love, starry-eyed young people who still ended phone conversations with five minutes of “no, you hang up first” or “no, you’re cuter.”
    Although they were only eighteen, he was already thinking about marriage. He loved her so much, and she loved him, how could they ever break up? It was impossible. He was secretly saving half his checks from Chucky Cheese toward a ring and had begun scouting out possible apartments. He wasn’t sure what she’d think, or even if she would say yes, but he honestly didn’t care, he was in love, and that was all that mattered.
    “Our song is the slamming screen door, sneakin' out late, tapping on your window…” the song went on. Her head drooped and Aiden shifted himself to accommodate.
    “When we're on the phone and you talk real slow ‘cause it's late and your mama don't know…” he closed his eyes
    “Asking God if he could play it again …”she sighed and the banjo kicked in. He had no idea how a banjo managed to sound sexy, but it did…
    The song ended and she woke up with a start. He caressed her hair and she whimpered a little, then decided to get up. She rose, stretched, yawned, and stumbled over to the door where she had left her jacket.
    “I should get home.” She said groggily “Mom’ll be mad if I’m out too late.”
    Aiden nodded and got up himself, grabbing her purse and handing it to her. She smiled, gave him a peck on the cheek and exited out the sliding door that led out of Aiden’s parents’ basement. He sighed and went back to the couch. He always felt so alone without her.
    He played the CD again, patiently waiting through the whole album before he got to their song. He smiled, and slowly drifted off to sleep.

    The next day was full of school, sports and more school. He had a quick instant message conversation with her, but other than that Aiden was entirely Madeline-deprived for the day.
    That night he was kept awake by her thought and listened to their song a dozen times, enough so that he could still hear it when the player ran out of juice. At three in the morning he decided that he had to move a little, so he got up and walked outside. Grand Rapids in the early morning, not a pretty sight. Bums coughed and groaned, somewhere a siren blared, a young man ran down the street, hunched over, muttering incoherently about “them.”
    Aiden had been born and raised in the city, hardly ever gone outside it, come to think of it, never really wanted to. It was his home, it was all he knew. Big open spaces might confuse him. People who talked slowly and mispronounced things could scare him.
    Somewhere a dog barked and a couple bickered.
    He turned to go back inside, the cold floor of the deck making his muscles tense. Spring was here, but in the city one season was the same as another.
    Aiden went back to the basement, perhaps hoping to get the slightest scent of her, or a vague memory of how she moved. He lay down on the couch and flipped on his MP3 player, setting it to ‘repeat’ and selecting their song. Slowly he fell asleep, letting his eyes close and his thoughts run into one another.
    “Our song is the slamming screen door…”

    The next day he saw her at last. She had come to watch him play basketball and he thought that he did exceptionally well with her around. His little lucky charm. When he was done and showered he went over to her and she kissed him, gave a quick hug and fell in step next to him.
    “How’s it going?” he asked, genuinely interested.
    “Okay, my mom’s being stupid again but that’s nothing strange.”
    “Sorry,”
    “Not your fault. You have a good game?”
    “Yeah, I like having you there around.”
    They giggled and drew closer.
    “So you wanna go somewhere?”
    “Sure, got anywhere in mind?”
    “Not really, how ‘bout coffee?”
    “Sure, coffee’s good. There’s a little diner down on 38th I go to sometimes, but it’s in a kind of nasty part of town. That okay?”
    “No problem, I got my big strong knight right here.” She punctuated this by hugging his arm and he kissed the top of her head.

    They found the diner and a little bell on the door rang as they entered. Soon the couple was waited on by an older woman who looked like she wanted to sit on them both. They ordered coffee and donuts and began to talk.
    They conversed for half an hour about this and that, gossip heard and made up, sweet nothings that drew them closer together. Eventually there was silence and Aiden decided to go for it.
    “Maddy?”
    “Yeah?”
    “What would you think about moving in together, like, in a couple months? I’m getting pretty good money and I think maybe we could make it—”
    “What?”
    “Move in. Together.”
    “Uh, Aiden, this is a little, uh, weird.”
    She was flustered and obviously opposed to the idea, but not openly. Aiden got annoyed.
    “Well, why not?”
    “Well, I don’t know, it’s a little soon,”
    “We’ve been going out for two years now, if we don’t do it now, when will we? We don’t have our whole lives.”
    “But we’re just eighteen, neither of us have a job or…anything.”
    “I have a job!” he was raising his voice now.
    “I know, I know, but, like, a real job, a career. Like at an office or something.”
    “You really want me to go to some cubical and wear a little dress shirt and stuff? Forget it!”
    “No, I just mean—”
    “No, no, forget it. Just forget I said anything.” He sat back in his seat and looked away.
    They avoided eye contact for a couple minutes, looking at their food or out the window, each ignoring the other and digesting the information that had just passed between them and the whole diner, each trying to undo the cold knot twisting steadily tighter in their stomach.
    The bell on the door rang.
    “Aiden,” Maddy began, but was cut off.
    “Okay, everyone on the ground! Now!” The two looked up and saw a pair of men in ski masks pointing guns around the peaceful diner. People began screaming and someone ran out the door. The fat waitress clung to the wall and babbled incoherently.
    The two men looked around, one, armed with a sawed off shotgun, began tearing through the cash register, ripping out bills as fast as he could. The other, a short, stocky man equipped with a pistol, pointed his weapon around and yelled curses at the terrified customers.
    Maddy began crying and Aiden tried to comfort her but didn’t want to arouse suspicion. As the one with the shotgun went in back for the safe the short one walked over to their booth, pointing the pistol at Maddy.
    “Stop crying!” he screamed and jabbed the air with his muzzle. This only produced a fresh burst of tears from the hysterical girl. “Stop that!” he bellowed, and then switched the gun to Aiden “make her stop!”
    He tried, holding her and saying into her ear “Maddy, you have to stop, now, please, stop,” The song on the radio switched and a sexy banjo began murmuring to the terrified customers.
    Crack!
    A deafening explosion sent shockwaves through Aiden’s ears and made him jump. Maddy coughed and Aiden gripped her tighter, and with sudden terror felt hot liquid under his fingers.
    “Maddy,” he said with a slight edge of panic in his voice “Maddy!?” he turned her over and saw a gaping hole in her side, gushing blood onto the clean white floor. “Maddy!” it was an animal roar now, a sound of ultimate anguish. She looked at him coughed again, and without ceremony, stopped breathing.
    There was a moment of shock as he groped around inside himself for an emotion. He should be sad, but the reality of what had just happened would not compute in his brain, his mind just could not handle the idea that Maddy was dead.
    Then it hit him, like a tiny spark flicked onto a barrel of gasoline.
    He screamed, wild and anguished, and leapt from his seat onto the man that had fired the shot. Shocked and confused by this the murderer struggled as he went down, accidentally firing a shot into the ceiling.
    Aiden hit him, his powerful fist breaking that man’s jaw. He heard it crack and enjoyed it. He hit him again, sending a waterfall of blood from the man’s nose. With the third punch he struck the neck, making him cough like Maddy had coughed.
    Aiden gripped the gun and drew back firing, emptying the clip into the masked man before him. With each shot his arm jolted and drove him madder, until he was nothing but an animal.
    The other emerged form his place in the back and Aiden leapt across the counter, grabbing a large coffee cup from its place on the counter and smashing it over his head, sending shards and coffee and blood everywhere, and the man to the floor. He leapt on him and struck, once, twice, thrice, at his jaw and nose.
    “Our song is the slamming screen door,” the radio cooed.
    He struck again, fracturing his knuckle and breaking the man’s nose.
    “Sneakin' out late, tapping on your window”
    Thwack! Thunk! Thwack!
    “When we're on the phone and you talk real slow ‘cause it's late and your mama don't know”
    Every time he struck he could feel his fist slip on the blood that had accumulated. A hand touched his shoulder but he pushed the person away and struck again, now he heard the skull break.
    “And when I got home ... before I said ‘amen’”
    His fist hurt and he felt weak, so he grabbed the mask and ripped it off, revealing a disfigured face that had a beard, and once, a nose. He grabbed a clump of hair and began hitting the head, hard, against the tile floor.
    “Asking God if he could play it again…”
    He heard the skull crack, hit it again, and a thick gray liquid ooze out. He let himself be pulled back by the crowd. Somewhere there was a siren. The cops were coming. He’d probably get prison time for this, maybe just a mental institution, who knows, who cares.
    The beautiful, sexy banjo began playing all around him.
    He looked one last time on what he had done and saw that it was good