21: Leroy kills himself again

per·si·flage
1. light, bantering talk or writing.
2. a frivolous or flippant style of treating a subject.

The second time Leroy Thavish killed himself, he did so by accident. Traffic accident, to be exact. One cool morning in October, he put on a pair of very large headphones, told his iPod to play Third Eye Blind, and turned the music up to full. He sighed and threw a longing look at the seagulls cawing above a nearby MacDonald's. Then he took twelve steps out onto the 401 and was obliterated by a red Rav4.

After the story of his complete recovery had fluttered around in low-credibility tabloids for a few months, he was successfully charged with reckless endangerment, as well as six counts of manslaughter. The driver of the Rav4 and her twenty-three year old son in the passenger's seat had been similarly splattered when an even bigger SUV behind them on the freeway plowed into them, followed by an 18-wheeler which rolled over the new roadblock like a child on a deflating air mattress.

Miraculously, the driver of the trailer, Murray Givenchi, walked away from the accident without a scratch. Two years later, he was also charged with manslaughter when he fired six rounds into Leroy's chest. The charges were lifted when Leroy walked out of the hospital room two days later, and Murray was committed to a mental institution.

Leroy remembered that morning, because it was the first time he had been chased away angrily by a homeless person after attempting to give him change. He discovered too late that there was actually coffee in that mug. The hobo turned out to be a very disgruntled Murray, and he happened to be carrying his revolver in his tattered jacket for just such an occasion.

Historians interested in his predicament, writing for Weekly World News, would record this as the seventh time that Leroy Thavish, in fact, killed himself, as the shooting was ultimately the consequence of his own actions two years previous.