At 6:30pm, after stopping at an Italian deli to pick up a meatball hero, Jonathan Arnold walked cheerfully down Broadway towards 107th Street. He was looking forward to eating his sandwich and doing what he did every night, a little Jeopardy on TV and playing Fortnite until two or three in the morning. That had been his daily schedule for years. Preferring the virtual world to the real one, the only time he enjoyed reality was when he was on one of his special “dates”.

Approaching 107th Street, he daydreamed about his upcoming “date” in two days with Marisa Robinson, a dark-haired beauty who lived in one of his apartment buildings on 99th Street. She had recently gotten divorced and he figured she was no doubt lonely. In two days, he would help her get over her divorce.

About to cross the street onto his block, he saw something move on the roof of his building a quarter way down. His instincts told him not to turn and to keep going straight. Continuing downtown he bypassed 107th Street entirely and kept going. Two blocks further south, he turned left onto 105th, walked half a block east and pulled out his phone. A total geek and reasonably paranoid, Jonathan Arnold had installed hidden cameras within his apartment building’s hallways. “You can never have too much security,” he had often told himself. With this surveillance equipment in place he was able to see anything going on in, at or around his building.

Opening the app that activated his home security equipment, images of armed police officers were visible in the hallway on the floor above his apartment. Jonathan sighed. The game was over and it was time to get out of New York. He had known this day would come and he was prepared, though he hadn’t expected it quite so soon.

THE NEW YORK ECHO—

Sunday June 14, 2020

WEST SIDE STRANGLER—TRAPPED LIKE A RAT! by Tommy Devlin

Last night on June 13, a large-scale police operation assembled on West 107th Street to apprehend the man believed to be the West Side Strangler. With the SWAT team in place, the elusive Strangler now identified as Jonathan Arnold, a thirty-nine year old postal worker never materialized. According to a police spokesperson, an examination of the contents of Arnold’s apartment confirmed he was their man…

After dodging the cops staked out at his apartment, Jonathan Arnold sat on a stoop several blocks away, pulled his mask off and ate his meatball hero. Wiping his mouth with his sleeve, he deposited the empty bag in a nearby trash can. Jonathan Arnold killed but he didn’t litter.