“We also have your sister to consider right now,” I scoffed at her words, my temper rising with the mention of my useless sister.
“Let me guess, shipping her off to another fancy rehab again?” I didn’t bother to try and keep the judgment out of my words.
“Your sister needs our help, Craig. You’re old enough to try to learn to solve your own problems. What are you going to do when your father and I are gone? Who’s going to clean up yourproblems then? Have you thought about that? Have you even thought about growing up?”
I started laughing, I couldn’t help it. She was the one who raised me, and she had the audacity to condescend to me about acting my age? They always swept everything under the rug, paid top dollar for the best lawyers in the area, so nothing ever happened to their children. Yet now she wants me to grow up?
“Have you had the same conversation with Amber? Or are her addictions still covered by you and dad? Are you going to keep ignoring how many abortions she’s had the past few years because she can’t be bothered to remember to take her birth control when she spreads her legs for her fucking heroin?” Red and black dots blurred my vision, pulsing around the edges of my sight to the volume of the television. I could feel my face heating with rage, more intense than when I confronted his ex about trying to end things with me. Didn’t anyone understand they couldn’t just do this shit?!
“How we handle Amber is frankly none of your business. I suggest you find your own lawyer to help you with this situation, son.”
“With what money? Does Amber have to pay for her own trips to rehab? Does she have to pay for the hospital visits when her stupid ass overdoses?”
“Your father and I did try to tell you to go to college when you graduated. You chose not to listen to us.”
“You could have made me!” I yelled, remembering how not once had either of them ever bothered to try to talk me into changing my mind about furthering my education. They had let me drop out; they let me do whatever I wanted. It wasn’t my fault that they never made me be anything more than what I was.
“We could have, but you needed to learn from your own mistakes, Craig. You can’t blame your father and me for everything every time things don't go your way. It’s time you grow up and learn to take responsibility for your own actions.”
At that moment, I snapped. Her back was turned to me, angled towards the kitchen doorway. My vision cleared as my hands wrapped around the fire poker next to the couch. Without second-guessing my actions, I swung, the hooked end making contact with the back of her head.
I must not have hit her hard enough to knock her out since a single scream erupted from her throat, her cigarette falling from her hand and landing on her plush carpet, creating a sizzling burn mark. Blood sprayed back from the blow; I could feel how warm it was when it hit my face. I couldn’t stop myself.
Over and over, I swung the fire poker widely at her. Face down on the carpet, she didn’t struggle. With each blow, more blood landed on her perfectly white walls.
“Shut up. Shut up. Shut up!” I screamed over and over again, with every swing of the poker. When would she shut up?
I wasn’t aware that I was yelling, let alone that anyone else had entered the room. Dorthy’s skull was caving in, chunks of brain matter visible through the blood that was now coating the walls, her favorite chair, and the television. Bits of bone from her broken skull flew from her body, ripped away with the hook from the poker every time I drew it back.
Vaguely, I felt a pressure on my arm, the ringing in my ears preventing me from hearing the screams coming from behind. Without looking, I shoved my elbow back, making contact with another body that didn’t try to grab at me again. Still, I swung, strike after strike, landing against my mother’s skull that was slowly losing its shape. The back of her head was completely open and exposed—no longer resembling a human.
With one last swing, I embedded the fire poker into her precious TV, the screen cracking in a spider web pattern, casting silence over the ruined room. My chest heaved as my vision cleared. Without the excess noise, I found it easier to breathe, easier to think.
Slowly, I took in my surroundings as my stomach sank. I wasn’t filled with regret, not like a normal person would be. The fire poker fell from my hands, not from remorse, only from how stiff my knuckles had become from gripping it so tightly.
Taking a step away from my mother’s now silent body, I bumped into something solid that wasn’t there before. Turning around, I saw why. Blood dripped from the corner of thesolid marble coffee table, pooling beneath it. My sister, Amber, lay off to the side, unmoving, with a crack running up the back of her skull. That explained why it had felt like someone had grabbed hold of me in the middle of my tantrum.
That’s what my mother had always called my outbursts, my little tantrums. Though I doubted she would think they were so little now.
I wasn’t sure what I felt as I gazed at the corpses of my mother and sister. Regret wasn’t an emotion I had ever been familiar with. I hadn’t wanted them dead. I just wanted the noise to stop. If my mother hadn’t wanted me to turn out this way, maybe she should have done a better job at raising us.
Still, I couldn’t leave the mess for her housekeeper or my father to find. They weren’t Raelynn; they didn’t deserve to be laid out in such a manner to be found. My mother at least deserved to have some respect, even if her mouth had earned her what had happened.
Growing up, my parents had never forced either me or Amber to do household chores; it was what they paid their housekeeper for. I had seen enough TV shows to know that I needed to clean up the blood. Thanks to Raelynn, I had been forced to watch true crime documentaries. For once I was glad she had such strange tastes in what she considered relaxing entertainment.
Moving the bodies was the hardest part. Trash bags from the kitchen proved too weak to wrap them in to move them out ofthe living room. I settled for using colorless threadbare blankets from the hall closet. The thread count was high enough to wrap them into getting them upstairs without much hassle or fear of them tearing. Amber weighed far more than our mother did; she always had an issue not knowing when to close her mouth and stop eating.
Dorthy was the hardest one to get into bed. Annoyance overcame me as I tried to get her head to stay on her pillow. The missing parts of her skull made it difficult to keep it lying flat. I cringed outwardly as I was forced to get my hands dirty with her carnage while getting her head to stay where I wanted it. Lying on her back, if I looked from the right angle, it was hard to see how big the hole was; I could almost tell myself she was sleeping.
Washing up in the bathroom after getting them both in their respective beds he took on the task of cleaning up the living room. It would never be spotless. The more I tried to clean the blood stains, the more I found myself getting covered in it again. There wasn’t anything I could do to prevent my father from knowing what I had done, no matter of cleanliness I could accomplish to make everything normal again.
Leaving towels saturated in bleach and a bucket of cleaning supplies now stained red on the living room floor, I made my way to the kitchen. Being a creature of nearly predictable routine, my father’s keys still hung in the same spot. I couldn’t take my own car now, at least I stood a slim chance of getting tothe only hiding place I knew of if I took a car I hadn’t been associated with yet. I’d make sure Raelynn paid for what happened to my family. My hands may have been the ones covered in blood, but her actions are what drove me, and soon her blood would join that of my mother and sister.
April 8th 2021
Romance movies have it all wrong. Love doesn’t fix anything. It’s not a cure for anyone’s faults, nor does it make someone treat you with respect. Love isn’t constant or unconditional, or forgiving. Not from men anyway. Love blinds you, makes you accept flaws, and buries your selfish needs on how you wish to be treated.
Love was the worst four-letter word anyone could use, in my opinion. Insults were easy to overlook, but love, that’s what could break someone down until they didn’t recognize themselves anymore.
