Mistaken Identity

Stan Garetti has owned the Parkwood Manor apartment buildings since 1995 when his mother left them to him in her will. He had been using an abandoned office for booking bets for wealthy clientele until then without much gain for himself. On an average week, he brought in just enough to pay his utilities and buy enough food to live. He lived month to month, but it was not much of a life. Stan had become gaunt and an unhealthy form of thin. His mother did not know where he was or what he was doing. He had run out as a teenager and she had not changed her will in the 15 years he had been gone.


Now in his late forties, Stan was now an unhealthy form of average build and weight. He had the right weight and shape for his height, but was not the kind of man that worked out other than in his visits to the occasional lonely housewives in his apartments. He had taken to the electronic age for his book making business and now took bets via email and phone. He held monthly meetings with clients for pay out and pay in from the old abandoned office to keep a distance, but he no longer worked from that office outside of these monthly meetings.


In fact, Stan had begun to drop clients since he no longer needed the money as badly to live on and he had found himself spending more of his time in 14B with Jennifer Brilke. There was something about him that she had taken a liking to and he wasn't going to miss out. Jennifer was a beautiful 39 year old woman who was not overly happy with her husband Ed.


Stan liked Ed. Stan had a similar build and hair style to Ed albeit a bit thicker. Ed had lost his father when he was a kid as well and had grown up in a single mother home lacking the male influence of a constant father. He had also found himself feeling like a burden to his mother as she tried to continue her life without the man she had planned to finish it with beside her. They often discussed the lack luster courting routines of the men that interviewed for the position of father and a role of husband they could not and would not be able to fill.


This did not stop Stan from seeing Jennifer throughout the week while Ed was at work and it would have continued this way for years had that lizard thing not come into Ed and Jennifer's bedroom that day. Stan was lying naked under the sheets as Jennifer began to drift off on her side when the wall started to smoke and figure appeared in a dark hooded robe. A scaly green finger pointed at Stan before leaning in and mumbling something about time being up or overdue.


In a fit of courage the Jennifer would keenly recall later, Stan leapt across the bed to the other side of Jennifer begging the thing to take her and not him as she lay frozen in terror next to the naked man crouched behind her like a frightened child. A cold wind swept into the room as the figure stepped forward and through the bed as if it were a pool of water her was wading through. The robe cut through Jennifer's leg as it stopped a few inches from Stan. Stan and Jennifer both retreated to their respective corners as the looming shape stopped between them.

Out of fear and in an attempt at self preservation, Jennifer reached back for the antique ceramic lamp given to her by Ed's mother and launched it through their attacker before it hit the wall in a purge of smoke gained during the pass through without touching the looming threat. The figure stopped and addressed Jennifer for the first time since entering the room. Jennifer witnessed the green within the shadow below the hood and recoiled at the uncoiling tongue that hissed out a warning to stay out of this fight.

The robed figure reached a long arm into its sleeve and pulled out a large velvet bag. The bag also smoked as it exited the robe and appeared large enough to hold the bureau on which the 32" TV stood in the bedroom. An arm reached toward Stan deftly tossing him headlong into the sack despite his violent flailing on the floor. As valiantly as Stan fought in captivity, he was unable to emerge from the bag again. Velvety imprinted of Stan's face and fist were apparent in his struggle but to no avail for the trapped man.

The tall beast stepped through the rest of the bed dragging Stan in bag through the wall with a thud as the bag refused to dissipate through on first pull. With a hiss heard from the other side of the wall, the bag was jerked through the drywall leaving a hole in the shape of a crumpled man. Stan was knocked unconscious by the final blow and would not notice the sound of the front door opening as he was led out without the glitz of a smoke screen through a concrete wall. He would awaken twenty minutes later in the back of a van driving at high speed across town.