A Mother's Love

Another Terrible Minds Flash Fiction Challenge by Chuck Wendig. One thousand words. Here we go.
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"Wanna hit?"

"No, Mom, I'm good."

"You sure? Good stuff."

"Yes, Mom, I'm sure."

Most 12-year-olds being offered a toke off their mother's joint during breakfast would naturally assume there was no way she was being serious. But that's also assuming one's mother was not only rocking the wake-and-bake, but doing it at the dining room table as well. Thomas knew his mother was serious; she was generous to a fault and that included sharing the kind with her only child.

Jenny, Thomas' mother, wasn't a bad person. She doted on her son, ensuring he had everything he needed to live a happy, healthy life. Whether it was paying for his private schooling, buying him the newest iPhone when it came out (and not making him pay for the phone and the service plan like his friend Tyler's parents did), or burning down the house of the high-school kid who punched him at the mall just because he didn't "like you soulless fucking gingers," her heart was in the right place.

He looked at her, simultaneously eating eggs with one hand while checking his Twitter account on his phone with the other. Thomas knew, objectively, his mom was attractive. After his father died in an unfortunate meth lab explosion, Jenny had had a couple different boyfriends and they had made their way to the small but cozy home the two shared. Two of them he got on well with because they, like he himself, loved comic books, especially Batman. Thomas hadn't liked the most recent man to come a-courtin' the Widow Jenkins. He had shoved Thomas once when he came over drunk, announcing he didn't care much for little orphaned bastards.

The glass eye he was fitted with after Jenny took an ice pick to him looked pretty natural, Thomas had to admit.

The boy was aware his mother wasn't a typical mother in that she didn't feel the need to hide anything. At all. Thomas knew other women Jenny's age did similar things, or worse, but were much more adept at hiding their indiscretions. And it's not as though she was a harsh woman; nothing could be further from the truth. She smiled easily, never swore, and that time she beat the preacher's son mercilessly with an aluminum baseball bat after the young Baptist had spray painted "Cock EATING Whorr!!!" on the side of their house, she immediately called 911 and waited with him until the EMTs arrived. She even bought a massive floral display for his funeral a week later.

It just never bothered Thomas the way other people felt it should bother him. The only time he felt embarrassed regarding his family was after his father's accident. It wasn't that his dad, a man who encouraged the boy's love of online gaming and cried during Little House on the Prairie reruns, was cooking meth. It was the fact he was cooking meth with someone he knew was borderline retarded and was being watched by the police. Doing something illegal wasn't necessarily bad, but doing something stupid was.

The people in the community tut-tutted whenever they saw Thomas and Jenny in public, their assumption being that this poor boy, a straight-A student who was active in sports and the student newspaper, was living a Dickensian existence at home away from prying eyes. Stories of abuse by the endless string of Jenny's lovers (in truth, she had Biblically "known" one man since her husband's death and that was an ill-advised one-nighter occurring about 450 miles away from home) and a life lived humiliated by his family's shameful behavior couldn't be further from the truth. He missed his father terribly and he loved his mother without condition.

In fact, he felt worse for the people too uncomfortable to live their lives honestly and without excuses. So his mother liked to drop acid at church. Who did it hurt? If anything, Jenny running down the aisle topless provided Pastor Daniel a much-needed distraction from thinking of his dead son. Jenny had a penchant for beating abortion protesters with a pipe she kept in her Audi. Again, is there really a victim? Some tormented girl has one less asshole screaming at her and said asshole is taught a very valuable lesson. At worse, it was a push.

"Honey, I'm going to be late picking you up after school," Jenny said, interrupting Thomas' train of thought. "Your aunt wants me to take her shopping this afternoon and she said it's only going to be an hour or so, but you know she's lying."

It was true. Aunt Lydia was a delightful person but suffered from several different forms of mental illness, including a case of OCD that made grocery shopping more painful and uncomfortable than surprise sodomy. Example: she would shake a two-liter bottle of soda, wait a minute, then count the remaining carbonation bubbles. The bottle with the least amount of bubbles was the satisfactory one. Thankfully, Lydia only liked one very specific soda so they didn't have to do this with every single container. The problem lie when the one store at which she liked to shop was out of her brand. Then things became difficult.

"That's OK, Mom," Thomas said, finishing up the last of his sausage. "I wanted to stay a little late anyway. I'm working with Mr. Inkwell on some Photoshop stuff for the newspaper."

"My little future Pulitzer winner!" Jenny exclaimed. "What did I ever do to deserve a perfect boy like you?"

"You held the stork hostage and threatened his wife with a straight razor unless you got the best baby in the bunch," Thomas said. "At least, that's what Dad always told me."

"Oh, your father," she said. Jenny didn't talk about Tony much--it was obvious she still missed him terribly. Thomas quickly changed the subject.

"By the way, I'm probably going to stay home this weekend."

Jenny stopped what she was doing and looked at her son. "I thought you were going paint balling. You've been looking forward to this for a month! What happened?"

Pause.

"Oh, nothing. Just changed my mind."

But Thomas knew his hesitation had betrayed him. Jenny was a pretty smart cookie.

"It's that girl, isn't it? She's going to be there, isn't she?" she asked with a dangerous tone in her voice.

Jenny was referring to Zoe, a girl Thomas had had a crush on for more than a year. Two weeks ago, when Thomas made his intentions known to her via text message, she took a screen shot of it and posted it to her Facebook page, tagging Thomas and nearly their entire class in the post. Normally other-worldly composed regardless of the circumstances, even Thomas had taken this quite badly.

"Yes," Thomas said quietly.

His mom effortlessly scooped up the breakfast dishes, depositing them into the sink with a smile, the smell of kush and her perfume tickling Thomas' nose. She snubbed out the rest of her joint in the ash tray on the table and turned to look at her only child.

"Would you like me to grab my cattle prod and some zip ties before I talk to Zoe?"

"Yes, Mom," Thomas said. "And thanks. I love you, Mom."

"And I love you, too. Now get your backpack so I can get you to school."

32 Best Horror Movie Deaths Ever

 

All lists are subjective as they're based on the opinions of the originator(s) of said lists, but this one's pretty good. It even provides the YouTube videos showing the murder scenes in all their gory glory.

I'm Going To Kill Frank Leonard

Once again, I've taken up the challenge set by Chuck Wendig at his Terrible Minds blog. This time, we were tasked with a thousand-word piece that must include at least ten of the following words: 

Beast, brooch, cape, dinosaur, dove, fever, finger, flea,gate, insult, justice, mattress, moth, paradise, research, scream, seed,sparrow, tornado, university

Game on.

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I’m going to kill Frank Leonard.

It sounds harsh, I know, but there is cause. This won’t be pre-meditated murder. Oh no, sir. This is a case of justice being meted out. I’m going to kill Frank Leonard and anyone else who gets in my way.

But how should I go about it? Frank is in charge of the agricultural science research division at the university. I had thought about going in there and unloading a gun into him while he’s making one of his pompous speeches to a group of potential donors. I believe that would be passé, though. I mean, when’s the last time you heard about a school shooting? Probably yesterday, right? That doesn’t even raise an eyebrow anymore. And Frank deserves to have his death be more than just a blip on the radar, a two-minute hit on the evening news for some talking head to tut-tut over while asking if the Second Amendment should be overturned via their Question of the Day. No. I want Frank Leonard to scream my name as he dies and I want the world to know that he deserves it. He deserves to be put down like a rabid beast.

So, how to go about it then. A home invasion perhaps? Pick a day when his wife and son are gone, maybe to one of the boy’s soccer games that Frank never attends because he’s working. Always working. Always looking for money to prove to the school’s overlords that he is worthy of taking his share of their ill-gotten gains every two weeks. His office is in his bedroom. Maybe I can just walk through the front door, silently climb the stairs, walk into the room where he and his wife sleep, and proceed to beat him. Beat him until my fists are red and sticky with his blood.

Then I would tie him to his mattress and wait for him to wake up. Yes. He would need to be awake for what’s going to happen next. Once he awoke, I would tell Mr. Leonard—wait, I’m sorry, DOCTOR Leonard, you worked too hard to be called MISTER, didn’t you? I would tell DOCTOR Leonard why I was there and why he was going to die. Because he is, you see. There is not going to be any mercy for this piece of poor judgment on God’s part. Once I made it plain he would only be leaving this room courtesy of a body bag, I would break his left ring finger. It would be an ironic gesture, indicative of how he so easily broke the vows of his marriage to a wife he doesn’t deserve.

Next, I would introduce him to the blunt end of a claw hammer. I’m thinking a couple whacks on the ankle would have to hurt something terrible.A quick shot to the mouth, shattering all that fine dental work would be no picnic, either. I’m sure he would be begging for mercy, panicked tears gushing from his swollen eyes. There will be no mercy, though. Like I said, Frank Leonard is going to die and he’s going to die at my hands.

While he’s offering me anything and everything to remain upon this mortal coil, I’ll slip out of the room, stroll downstairs (I’m going to be in a great mood and happy people stroll), and head to the garage. I’ll find the red plastic gasoline canister and walk (stroll) back upstairs. I’m going to show him the gas and take the matches out of my pocket and his eyes will bulge from his beaten, lumpy head. He knows. Oh, he knows. Then, I’ll—

You know what? No. I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to kill him in his home and then burn the house down. His wife and little boy don’t deserve that. They already live with this little piss ant of a man; why add insult to injury? Why, indeed.

So how, then? Wait in the backseat of his faggoty hybrid until he leaves his office and when he gets buckled in, stick an ice pick into his brain stem, Mafia style? Walk up to him when he’s out in one of the ag department’s trial fields, checking seed growth, and bludgeon him to death with that claw hammer?

I know you’re asking, “Aren’t you afraid of getting caught?”Not at all, my friend, not at all. I want to get caught. I want to share with the world why Frank Leonard had to die and had to die in the most painful,degrading way possible. And now, having thought about it, those last ideas won’t do at all. Don’t want to send Dr. Leonard to paradise relatively unscathed, do we?

It’s a dilemma. A crisis of spirit. I want Frank to die. I want him to die painfully, his last long, drawn-out moments in this reality to be spent in a hell of agony, regret, and humiliation. But, I don’t want anyone else to suffer the emotional trauma of seeing me give him what he so richly deserves. They won’t understand. His co-workers and friends and family…they simply won’t understand why Frank is being erased from his life in such a gruesome manner.

There is no perfect world and I can’t have everything I want. If it were a perfect world, Frank Leonard wouldn’t be in the position he’s in, only minutes away from eternal judgment. It has to be done and if some people are psychically scarred in the process, that is just some unfortunate collateral damage that Frank will be responsible for. Another mark in the ledger against a man who deserves the fate about to befall him.

I’ve decided.

“Hi, Mrs. Leonard! Dr. Leonard will see you now. He’s been really—

“Oh my God. Is that a gun?!”