Mr. Sykes

​During my youth there was a eccentric man that lived down the street from me. His name was Mr. Sykes. He was a retired professor of political science and was a hard core socialist that bordered on being a communist. I remember walking by him in the past when he was maintaining his lawn and he would wave me over to come have a chat. At first I found him interesting but after a few very lengthy conversations I could not listen to him anymore and I did everything in my power to avoid him. 

​His conversations were always the same  as he would go on lengthy rants against the government saying that we needed to move towards total socialism and have the government take complete control of the economy and people's lives, telling them what they should do, where they should work and how they should think. I was young at the time and ignorant so I bought into what he said, but I grew out of it fairly quickly as I sensed that he was trying to recruit me for his own personal agenda.

As I avoided him he eagerly tried to seek me out, but I always had excuses and got out of talking to him. Then one day two houses that were up for sale beside him were purchased by twin brothers. About a week after the twin brothers moved in I was out for a walk one night and passing by Mr. Sykes house and noticed that someone was in his yard looking into one of his windows. I moved in closer and realized it was one of the twin brothers who had recently moved in. I continued to observe and it was evident that Mr. Sykes was not at home. Moments later one of the twins jimmied open the back door and entered the house. I then passed through the gate into Mr.Sykes yard and then saw a light pop on in the basement of his house. I moved closer to the window and looked inside. One of the twins was going through the personal belongings of Mr. Sykes and for some unknown reason the twin was photographing his possessions. The twin then neatly put everything away as he found it. After about five minutes the light in the room turned off. I then quickly left the yard.

That night I went home thinking about what I saw. It was obvious that one of the twins was a cop and was keeping Mr.Sykes under surveillance. I wondered if the twins had bought the houses beside Mr. Sykes as part of an undercover operation. The more I thought about things the more plausible my theory was. But why were they after Mr. Sykes? I thought about it some more and then remembered several incidents in the past where the police were called to Mr.Sykes house. One in incident in particular I remembered when the night after an election he burned a flag on his front lawn. Then on another occasion he had a toilet on his front lawn and a fake severed head of a politician he hated sticking out of the toilet. The police came on both occasions and questioned him. The next day on his front lawn he had a big sign that read, "The police are tyrants."

Then one morning as I was leaving for work I saw over a dozen police cars surrounding his house. The police were in tactical gear as they burst into the house with tear gas. Minutes later Mr. Sykes was escorted out of the house in his pajamas and handcuffs. 

I watched the police search his property and pull assault rifles, hand guns, grenades, bullet proof vests, bomb making equipment and plastic explosives. They laid them on the front lawn for everyone to see.