Father Son Killer
He stares at his father. A mix of love and sadness fill him on every visit. His father dying more and more with each passing day. Drugs, hard living, and two cancers have taken its toll on this old withered body. The son makes his way over to his father. He gently picks up his hand. His father slowly awakens, blinking, adjusting his eyes to the morning light. “Son” The father says in his raspy voice. “Yea pop, it’s me.” The son replies. “I bought you something,” the son pulls out a photo of his mother in her younger years. A beauty she was.
The father takes the photo, stares at it, smiles, reminiscing he begins to cry. He kisses the photo. Then in a blink of an eye he starts laughing and we’re not talking about a chuckle. He’s full blown hysterically laughing . The father tears the photo in half.
“Dad, what’s wrong with you? Why’d you rip up moms photo?” The son says surprised as hell. His father has never said an ill word about his mother. Not even after he caught her cheating with his brother, or the neighbor or those fellas from the local bar. Not after she stole his money and he found her strung out on a three day bender in a run down motel. Not an ill word, ever.
“I loved your mother dearly, probably too much, but the bitch was crazy. And the day she died, god rest her soul, was the happiest day of my life.” The father says rather nonchalantly.
“I don’t understand, you always seemed happy. I know you guys had your problems, but still, you seemed happy.” “What can I say, I’m a good liar.” The father says with a smile. “I need to tell you something, sit.” The son sits at the edge of the bed. He takes a deep breath trying to ready himself for whatever his father may say next.
“I promised your mother on her deathbed I’d take our family secret to the grave.” “What family secret?” The son says nervously. He can’t take this anticipation he needs to know now, this second, not a minute from now. “Wait boy, let me finish. I promised your mother but when you’re about to meet death yourself you do a lot of reflecting. Now, I know I will never make good with god but there are some things a man just can’t have on his chest when he crosses to the other side. Plus, your mother made a great deal of promises to me and that skanky bitch never kept one of them. So, here it is. Your mother aint yo mother and I aint yo father.”
The son gets up and takes a step back. He can’t process what he just heard, he needs a minute. Really, he needs a lifetime, but right now, he’s just got the minute.
“What do you mean you aint my dad and mom wasn’t my mom?”
“What’cha hard of hearing boy? What don’t you get? I’m not your daddy. And that whore that raised you aint yo mother. Shit, you should be relieved to know you don’t come from such bad DNA.”
“Every day for 28 years you lied to me.” The sons a bit defeated.
“I told you I was a good liar.” There goes that damn smug ass smile again.
“I don’t understand. How can I not be yours? Yall raised me. Was I adopted?”
“Adopted,” the father says with a chuckle. “Hell naw boy, you was napped.”
“Napped?” The son says confused.
“Kidnapped. It was her idea. She always wanted a son. So, when she saw you she just had to have you. And when that woman wanted something, she made for damn sure she got it.”
“I was kidnapped.” The son says stunned by the news. “Kidnapped.” He repeats, as if saying it more than once will take the sting out the truth.
Devastated, the son leans up against the wall, his body trembling. The last few minutes have been so shockingly surreal he can’t make any sense of it.
After what seems like an eternity of silence the father speaks. “On your way out remind the nurse that I don’t want any of that nasty hospital mayonnaise they put on them sandwiches. Tell her to just give me mustard.”
“Where are my parents?” The son asks.
“What?” The father says pretending as if he didn’t hear the question the first time.
“If yall aint my real parents, then who is?”
“We kidnapped you boy, it aint like we filled out papers and shit.”
“OK, then tell me about the day you took me.”
“That was a long time ago.” The father says bored with this questioning.
“Tell me goddammit!” The son says with authority and for the first time, anger. “Tell me what they looked like.” Sometimes we ask questions for the answers we want to hear but we rarely get to hear those answers.
“Your mother was alone, we never saw your father. She was in her early or mid twenties. She had long brown hair, nice ass, a great pair of tits and the deepest blue eyes I’d ever seen on a woman. I’ll never forget those eyes and that look. When we put her in the van she gave me this look like she was seeing deep in my soul or something.”
“You put her in the van.” The son says to himself as a realization rather than a question. “You kidnapped my mother, too?”
“How else you think we took ya boy. She wasn’t just gonna hand her son over.”
“What did you do to her?” The son says with fear in his voice because deep down in his gut he knows the answer, he just wants to ignore it. “You’re mother met the same fate as eleven other sweet brunette’s did.” The son takes a deep breath, exhales, then… “And that would be?”
“She died. They all died, well, we killed them.” And there it is, again, that smug ass smile.
The son crouches down in a ball of tears. He doesn’t know why he feels so much hurt and pain for a woman he’s never met. Maybe it’s the revelation his parents aren’t his parents. Maybe it’s because she was his mother. Maybe it’s the knowledge that the people who raised him were cold blooded killers. Maybe it’s the twelve dead women.
It’s all of it.
The son stands, tears in his eyes. “You killed my mother. You killed twelve women.” He says with a calm rage. “I may not be your real daddy but I raised you and I raised you to be tougher than that. Wipe them goddamn tears from your face boy.” The father says with a grunt. “You said it yourself. You aint my father.” The son says with a light airiness in his voice like he’s unsure just how he feels about the words he just spoke. “You’re just some evil man.” He walks over to the bed, yanks the pillow from under his father’s head. “What’cha gonna do with that boy.” The father says. “What twelve women have been wanting to for years.” The son places the pillow over his father’s face and presses down, hard. So hard his arms begin to shake. The veins on his neck bulge. The father flails his arms everywhere. Hitting the son in the face, chest, arms, anywhere he can to try and break the sons grip, but he’s too weak, too many drugs, medical and illegal, have taken a toll on his body. The flailing stops. The father’s arms go limp and drop to his side. His body motionless. The son presses down harder, tears falling from his cheeks onto the pillow. Everything seems to slow down. What is only just a few seconds feels like a lifetime. The sons face looks lost, like his body is doing something his mind has yet to fully comprehend. Then, he stops, backs up to the wall leaving the pillow over his father’s face. He watches, his father doesn’t move. He keeps watching. Nothing.
It’s been three minutes and his father hasn’t moved an inch. He just stares at him, he knows now. He’s dead. He killed his father. No, he wasn’t his father, he was just an evil man. A man who killed twelve women, including his mother. Yea, that’s it, he didn’t kill his father, he killed an evil man. There it is, that smile, that smug ass smile.
