I

Tension rippled through his shoulders down his back, like hundreds of tiny worms crawling just beneath the surface of the skin. Those closest shuffled aside. Those farthest from him leaned in. The stillness crackled loudly in mass anticipation which fed the moment several notches down the belt. Anger was firmly rooted in and yet he showed no other visible reaction. Everyone else stilled, waiting.
There are experiences in life that play varying tricks with time. Maybe you're terrified of heights and stupidly thought to overcome this fear by diving out of a plane. A ten second drop stretches eons into oblivion. Memory inches it a touch more each time. Usually though these moments are singular, affecting only one. Sometimes maybe a few. This however was a scale unknown before.
Day was just pulling it's fiery reds out of the sky. Cold, definately cold, was the unspoken consensus. The chill however, held very little sway. Many thought to step out of the rain, but noone moved. Noone whispered. Streetlights flickered into life unnoticed. Splashes rose from the concrete and asphalt. Small, moist, gusts of wind picked their way down the road, carefully avoiding the crowd surrounding the one house where one man hesitantly began walking towards the end of his life as he knew it.
The walkway ended in steps leading to a wooden door that was usually white, but tonight had a crimson splash that brought with it a note fastened down by a knife that he slowly reached for. He glanced around him at the throng gathered here waiting for this very moment and resented it more than he ever had before. What caught his attention was the barely audible silence that appears when everyone holds their breath at the same moment. Turning away and blocking it all from his mind he pulled the shiv from the door and grabbed the note. All it said was "I got em. I got em for ya Charlie."
A sob rose, from the back of the crowd, that released the well of emotion that had been waiting to burst open. The knife clattered at his feet and the note flitted away into a puddle. His head hung down and he waited for the punchline. The joke was on him.....because there was no joke. He knew with a certainty that his family was dead.