083 - cry

The night air was crisp and completely silent. A sleepy suburban neighborhood even during the day, in the middle of night, there was truly not a single sound. Everyone was safely asleep in their beds, and all the lights were shut off. For sound, there was only the faint background hum of crickets, and for illumination, only the light of the moon.

It was nearly three in the morning when Dale's van dared to break the silence. He had come in off of one of the bigger thoroughfares, and as he pulled into the little community, he did his best to maintain the silence. His van was in good running shape, so it purred like a kitten, and of course he had the radio off in the car, along with anything else that might potentially make a peep--he did not even allow himself the air conditioner.

He already had the window down, anyway, and he enjoyed breathing in the fresh late night smells. Dale made sure to bring his vehicle's pace way down once he got into the neighborhood, and the engine was running so quietly that he could only faintly hear the rubber slowly treading on the pavement through the open windows. Dale's palms sweated nervously with anticipation and excitement as he continued crawling down the streets.

Dale was aiming to reach as close to the middle of the neighborhood as he could before coming to a stop. So, he continued slowly meandering through the cookie-cutter houses, all two-floor affairs that he admitted had once seemed desirable to him. No longer, though.

The streets were familiar, and he knew the majority of the people who lived in these houses. Some of them were kind, but many of them were just petty little people who had nothing better to do with their lives than stick their noses in other people's business. They were the worst, in Dale's eyes. He would feel no remorse for what he planned to do.

Eventually, he found the place where he wished to stop, and he pulled the car over to the side of the road, snugly against the curb. He left the engine running though, for if his plan was a success, he would like to make a smooth getaway, inflicting as much damage as he could in his wake. Dale undid his seatbelt and hopped into the back of the van.

He began to flip switches and press buttons, arming the rather large system he had in place in the back of the van. It was experimental at best, so Dale was nervous that it would work properly, or that it would work at all.

In short, the system would produce a very, very loud squealing sound. In fact, over half the back of the van was filled with special speakers specially made for pushing out the sound as loudly as possible. The catch was, the sound would not be audible at all to people, but rather it would be in the frequency range that dogs could hear.

It was Dale's hope that the dogs in this neighborhood would find the sound extremely unpleasant, and thus they would begin howling and barking, which would cause a great annoyance to their sleeping owners. He got excited at the thought of it working as he waited for the system to finish charging.

A moment later, the light turned green. It was time. Dale jammed it down. He could hear the speakers start to rumble slightly, but other than that, nothing. For a few moments. Then, came the dog barks. A cacophony of them, almost all at once. As the canine symphony refused to desist, the lights began coming on in the houses. It was glorious.

Dale hopped back into the driver's seat, and threw the car into drive. He would wake up the entire neighborhood in this way, and they would never suspect a thing. "Fuck you, homeowner association," he said under his breath as he pulled away from the curb.