Bloody Busines

It was hard to believe the events that conspired all of last week. My mind is still reeling as I ponder the necessity of an eye exam. There were plenty of women who could make glasses appear fashionable. 

            There weren’t very women who could make having a serial killer for a son fashionable. As the dead bodies fermented in the family basement, I sat with a hot cup of underwhelming tea. Despite my mother’s wise idioms, chamomile would not soothe my upset stomach. The vomit traveling through the pipes was proof. 

            Too bad she wasn’t here. I’m sure she would’ve found some sick humor in gloating about her prediction. Tommy isn’t normal. Her gravelly voice echoed in my mind between the metallic drumming from the basement.

            Good thing the neighbors aren’t alive to hear it. The bloody visage of their skin hanging over the boney edges where their skull had caved in, was painted on the wall of my son’s bathroom. The paint was still wet when the maid walked in. 

            It was the one time my son forgot to lock the bathroom door. Poor sweet lady. Her life was over the moment she made that discovery, and so was my delusion of having a perfectly normal son. 

            James Blain, the beloved son of the famed dance Loren Blain and wealthy businessman Mathew Blain, was as well-mannered as they come. In class, his teachers called him smart and friendly. The girls in class found his smile charming and desirable. They were like insects, unknowing walking into a venus flytrap. 

            There are five teen girls buried beneath my feet as I sip tea. We had to move them there; a contractor needed to replace the pipes in the garden. The sprinklers were showering the flowers in red water. James managed to convince the contractor that it was just rust.  

            At least he inherited my charisma. Too bad he didn’t inherit my heart. I had always molded kindness for him. When Marget Scrunch was given a staring role over myself, I faked joy and shared encouraging advice. I didn’t tell her husband that she only got the part by having an affair with the producer. 

            My husband allowed illegal immigrants to continue to work for him, even after they voiced ungrateful complaints. James had seen kindness in all its beautiful forms, but he still left crimson footsteps on my cherry hardwood floors. 

            “That the last bone mom,” his dark blue eyes sparkle almost as brightly as his pearly white teeth. He had his father’s thick black hair, my fair skin, and his grandfather’s defined chin. God, no wonder the girls at school fawn over him. 

            Waiting for an answer, he held a black opaque trash bag. A red smudge was peeking out from under his shirt’s collar, and another stained his jacket’s sleeve. He was always a messy child, and people would believe that it was paint.  

            “Good, if anyone asks the white powder in out trash is flour. Even cocaine would be a better answer than grounded up bone.” I explain to him, then gesture to the front door. It was our maid in that bag.

            “Whose gonna ask?” he smirked “I killed the neighbors. There isn’t anyone else to worry about.”

            “You never know,” I reason. Instead of listening, he set the bag in the chair across from. I did want to look at it. The last time our maid sat in that chair, she was drinking coffee and showing me her daughter’s prom pictures. We should fund that’s darling’s college. She was such a smart girl for rejecting my son, if not for her quick wit and straight A’s.

            “How about we visit the Scrunch estate later this afternoon?” he proposed while taking a cookie from the jar on the table. I half expected our maid to mumble about the crumbs on the table. The woman was dead; I could at least use her name. No, that would make this feel too real. 

            “Why on earth would I want to do that?” apart from last, I had no reason to want to visit Marget. If anything, I avoided her like the plague. Dame, bitch would brag about her career despite it being built by naked breasts and horny producers.  

            “Adda likes me. I wanna fuck her, and you know,” James bluntly admitted. At least I wouldn’t have to worry about him getting a girl pregnant. Death is one hell of a contraceptive. And grief is one hell of a distraction. 

            Marget’s career couldn’t handle that kind of distraction any more than my career could handle the reveal of Jame’s vice. It would destroy her.  That….well. 

That would be poetic. 

            “Not today, not right after the maid,” I say. “But maybe next week, if I have to congratulated her on winning the starring role in our future broadway performance.”

            “I can live with that” James nodded.