He hoped the
tape recorder would still work.
It was one of
those small portable ones often used in schools or libraries.
Teddy didn’t
even realize the irony of his action-Angie was in fact the one who
had bought it
for him.
He wiped the
hair and blood off the corner and released a sigh of frustration.
“Mother will
probably ground me from the television,” he considered,
looking to
the mess he had made.
“Damn her.
Damn them all. Why did she have to hurt Peg? Why?”
Balefully, he
kicked the corpse beside him.
Her glazed
eyes stared back at him with empty fascination. “You bitch. You killed Peg.”
His sister’s
dead look gave no response. (He wondered why.)
Her face
looked so shadowed. He lifted her head up by her clotted hair and saw that is
was dried blood on her
cheek that
created the mock shadow.
He saw, too,
that the dent in her skull had stopped gushing; the coagulated blood had formed
a gelatinous plug.
Mother would
be home soon. He would have to dig a grave.
Teddy got up
and walked to his bedroom where Peg’s plastic body lay deflated. Atop her
bloodless chest
was a kitchen
knife and she stared at the ceiling with her permanent expression-mouth in the
shape of an 0.
She looked as
if she would scream.
He picked up the
doll’s head and looked tearfully at the flat terrain of her airless, life-sized
figure.
Cradling her
head, he began to cry-each tear held a thousand wishes to bring her back. He
was glad Annie was
dead-she had
deserved every last blow. As Teddy stroked her artificial hair he noticed the
stench coming from
his sister
who lay several feet away. He knew it was urine-he had heard her bladder
release when he struck the
final deadly
blow. He had hit her once more for good measure-she killed peg. He had every
right.
Carefully, he
let Peg’s head rest on the carpet.
Bending down,
he kissed her cheek and wiped some sticky stuff from her rubber lip.
Mom had told
him before not to touch Peg or to make the nasty in her mouth, but he couldn’t
help it.
He loved her
too much just to leave her be. If mom found out he was the nasty then she would
take Peg away, like
before-he
would have to find her too.
As Teddy went
back to Angie’s body he stopped for a moment to marvel at her nudity.
He had always
watched her dress from the closet, but he never seen her thing up to close.
He was
fascinated by the dark tuft of hair between her legs-Peg didn’t have that.
Cautiously he
touched her thigh, and jerked way as if her flesh was hot. It wasn’t, though.
In fact, she was
starting to
get cold. It had been four hours.
“I hate you,”
he informed her cadaver eyes.
Again he
touched her thigh, but this time he didn’t pull away. Gently, he ran his
fingertips up her hip
and toward
her crotch. With the other hand, he pulled her muscled legs apart.
Between them
was a puddle of urine the size of a pancake. He gave her genitals a curious
poke.
She was much
softer then Peg, and wait-although her body was cold and pallid, she was warm
inside.
He was getting
excited by her macabre sexual divinity.
He had to
stop-Mother would be upset if he was doing the nasty. She hated the nasty;
Dad had found
that out the hard way. All she liked was sewing and watching Family Feud.
She loved
that Richard Dawson guy.
But she was
so yielding, so doughy. Peg’s skin was hard and waxy inside-he’d had her for
ten years (when he was
eighteen he
ordered her from a dirty magazine).
Angie was
only five then, and now she had matured into a beautiful young woman.
He really didn’t
hate her that much but she shouldn’t have killed Peg. He was only watching her
shower.
It was
nothing new. But she would have told Mother, Mother couldn’t stand for that
kind of filth in her house.
That’s why he
had to hide Peg in the first place. Mother was so old-fashioned; he had to hide
a lot from
Mother.
Going to the
garage, he fetched a spade and began digging in the garden. He had to finish
before she got home.
The soil was
tender, and it took a half hour to make the grave.
Time was
precious so he went in and cleaned up. He grabbed a towel and went to Angie’s
room.
Grabbing both
her arms, he pulled her back a few feet-the puddle had soaked into the carpet,
leaving a dark
stain.
He carefully
sopped it up and threw the towel in the closet.
As he dragged
her through the living room, he considered an idea. It was the best idea he
ever had.
If Mother had
liked the nasty, she would have been proud of his idea.
He dropped
Angie’s arms and went back to his room.
It painted
him to look at Peg’s wasted body; the gash in her chest seemed bigger and
painful.
But she was
old, he thought. Maybe it was best she had died.
Teddy tossed
the knife and carried the rubber doll’s limp torso through the kitchen into the
back yard.
“I’m sorry
Peg,” he told her painted face.
He wouldn’t
bury her just yet-first he wanted to try out his idea. If it worked, then he
would cover her up.
It was almost
time, he would have to hurry. Back in his sister’s room, he took of his jeans
and knelt beside the
corpse.
The smell of
death was pungent and sickening, but life was too frightening for him to
handle.
He was more
of a watcher. But it was too late for watching and she would be perfect. He could hide her.
Just like
Peg.
As Teddy mounted
his sister in a fumbling, incestuous act of necrophilia, Mother’s car pulled
into the cracked
driveway.
She saw
through the grimy windshield the rotting bags of trash piled among the weeds
near the porch. That
damnable Teddy. Just like his father.
Merely four
strokes within her, Teddy finished shamefully; he stayed inside her for a few
moments-he
liked the
slimy grip on his flesh.
He was
embarrassed, but he liked the nasty stuff so much. Why couldn’t Mother
understand his needs?
“Teddy didn’t
I tell you to take out the trash?” she hollered as the front door opened,
slamming into the wall.
She grimaced
as a rat scuttled from somewhere to anywhere. A catalog of punishments
befuddled her mind
as she
crossed the living room.
Teddy froze.
How could he explain this to Mother?
He would have
to hide Angie if Mother saw what-
“Teddy.”
As Mother
hobbled into the hall, he looked up from his disgraceful position.
She stood
above him, ancient and leviathan from his angle. Her cane loomed over him like
a tree trunk.
Teddy’s
frozen panic melted and he leapt up and hurriedly cupped his naughty parts,
hiding them from Mother.
“Teddy, why
didn’t you take out the garbage?”
“Huh?” He was
confused by her displaced question, her banal motherliness.
“Oh, never
mind.” She poked her cane at Angie with simple curiosity. “Put on your
drawers.”
“Mother, it
wasn’t my fault, she killed-“ He quickly shut his mouth-Mother couldn’t know
about Peg.
She hated
Peg.
“She’s dead,
huh?”
“Mother, I
didn’t mean to kill her.” That was a lie.
“You where
watching her again,” Mother beamed.
“No Mother. I
never ever watched her. I promise I didn’t.”
“You did. She
tells me.”
“No Mother.”
That bitch, she had told. He wished he could kill her again; she suffered too
little.
“I told you
not to do the nasty. And now I catch you doin’ it on your sister. What can I do
with such a
disrespectful
boy?
Her rhetoric
frightened him. What if she took away the television? What if she made him take those pills
again-what
had she called them? Saltpeter? He couldn’t fix that though. He was good at
hiding them under his
tongue and
then throwing them out his window.
Although
Teddy was taller than Mother, she overwhelmed him with her presence. She
stepped over
Angie and
raised her cane to his head; she was varicose in her elegance.
“Bad boys
have to be punished. That’s how we keep a family together.”
Sharply, and
with surprising force, she bludgeoned his head repeatedly until he collapsed,
limp and
denigrated on
the carpet.
When Teddy
awoke, he winced at the tugging pain at his eyelids-they wouldn’t open no
matter how hard he
strained.
Atop his
naked groin he felt the cold security of Peg, and beneath him the gritty soil.
Damn Mother
and her sewing.
He touched
his eyelids and knew he would find the tinny knotted stitches binding his
vision.
“Teddy,” she
called from above. “You’ve been a bad boy. You won’t be looking at Angie
anymore though,
I’ve seen to
that. Just like your father you are. I had to teach him a lesson too.”
He heard an
earthy scrape from above and pleaded for forgiveness. “Mother, please, I didn’t
mean to look. I’m
sorry.
Please, Mother-“
A scoop of
dirt landed on his face, covering his nose and mouth; his arms were squeezed
too tightly into the grave
to protest.
“Got to keep
the family together.”
Mother
continued to fill in the grave as Teddy struggled to free himself; he wanted to
spit but his mouthful
of dirt
prohibited any such action. Above, Mother babbled about discipline and Teddy’s
punishment led to
suffocation
as his eyes seeped tears of blood.
