Mother's Little Helper
BY. CHRISTOPHER B. JONES

MORNING.

A robin was perched on the windowsill, his plumage shivering in the sunlight as he sang his mating call through the city, resounding between the buildings that stretched up to the heavens. His call pierced the glass of Tommy's bedroom, who was still fast asleep, but Vincent, twisted in the blankets on the floor, looked up to the early morning sunlight and watched as the bird made a quarter turn on the stone ledge of the apartment building, to the glass and began to peck, his deep black eyes reflecting the light off the window. Those eyes seemed to be fixed on Vincent, and the small boy pushed the blankets down to his feet and approached the window, eyes glancing at Tommy, still asleep with a bit of drool seeping from the corner of his mouth.

Vincent smiled at the bird and placed his petite hand to the glass, and through the small pane, he felt the vibrations from the birds beak, pecking toward his palm. The glass did not chip away, and Vincent was unafraid. He saw a beauty in the bird that was captivating and unspeakably plain, the colours as they were lit by the sun. He stroked the glass with his fingers, over the beak, and the bird pulled away, staring at him through the glass.

The robin cocked his head to the side, as though he were surveying a delicious morsel, and took flight from the sill, his song once more penetrating the small bedroom of the apartment. Besides the birdsong, and the traffic that rumbled on the streets below, the entire apartment was silent. Tommy's parents had yet to wake, and his older sister still seemed to be asleep. He walked to the other side of the bed and nudged his friend, who did little more than grunt and roll over, the string of drool stretching down to the pillow beneath his head. Vincent chewed his lip and stepped over the pallet of comforters toward the door.

He took great care to open the door as silently as possible, and close it behind him without a sound, but it bumped a cheap plastic toy that had shifted in his wake. He help a deep breath and eyed Tommy, still dead to the world. Vincent's small feet crept down the hall and into the small front room, just beyond the open kitchen. The television was on, the sound on mute. He hated Saturday morning cartoons, but asleep on the couch, with one foot on the floor, was Tommy's sister, in a thin cotton pyjama set. Between the sunlight pouring through the sliding glass doors that led out to the small balcony, and the blue iridescence from the television, he could see her budding breasts in clear relief.

His heart stammered and he looked hard down the hallway for signs of life as he approached the sofa and knelt to her side, eyes on her sleeping face. Her fine eyelashes, caked with mascara flickered and his heart seized for a second, but like her brother, she was dead to the world. The golden light of the early morning sun reminded him of a photograph he had seen once, in a magazine his mother had bought him.

Vincent had always been on the softer side, his parents said. He was an artistic soul, he had been drawing longer than he could remember, and had always been enamoured by the arts and music. His parents encouraged him, as much as they could. Buying him sketchbooks every few months and magazines, to help in his creative process. His mother often took him to the local art museums, and out into nature, to discuss how to achieve the desired lighting qualities. She was a photographer, and proud that her son may follow in her footsteps.

He thought of his mother as his eyes followed the soft arc of her hair as it fell across her face, golden blond in the sunlight. She twisted on the old, broken down brown sofa and her full lips shivered as she breathed. It was almost a sigh, and it blew a strand of hair away from her mouth that caught fire in the sunlight. Vincent had had a crush on the girl for as long as he and Tommy had been friends, and he felt a deep sadness when she graduated as he entered his freshman year. It was to be a chance for them to get to know one another, and not as her little brother's friend. Maybe. He smiled at the thought, and looked back to the bedroom door across the hall from Tommy's, ears pricked for any sound.

The only thing he could hear was the water running through the plumbing of the apartment, a few footsteps up above, and the Robins song, still to be heard over the drone of the traffic outside.

Her name was less than a whisper on his lips as he scooted down the side of the couch, reaching out with a shaking hand to the bottom of her thin tank top, and slowly lifted it over her taut stomach, the small stainless steel hoop in her navel flashed bright in the sunlight, and his breath caught as he looked around the apartment with nervous eyes. Like a skittery mouse, he inched the shirt up over her breasts and just gazed at the soft, bubble gum pink nipples as they hardened, exposed to the cool air in the apartment.

The inside of his lip began to bleed between his teeth, as he stared at her chest as it softly rose and fell with each breath. His stomach clenched and he slipped the shirt back down, but it was too late. With the pounding of his heart in his ears, he hadn't heard the door down the hall open, or the heavy footfalls of the woman in Pepto-Bismol pink bunny slippers. He was so transfixed by his peak into the forbidden that he didn't see her walk up to him, and by the time he realised she was there, it was too late. He was already being grabbed by the scruff of the neck and thrown bodily to the floor, far away from the couch.

It was the carpet that tore at his face, but his body was numb, the blood and nerve endings focused on a single point in his body, but his eyes locked on the robin pecking at the sliding door. His chest ached from the impact, and his brain felt loose. He heard the springs of the couch release as Nikki stood up, off the couch. She didn't speak, or make a noise for that matter, but Vincent didn't have to see to know she was standing behind him, staring down at his prone form, motionless. Several long moments passed before he dare move, his face was flushed with blood, besides the rug burn. He heard her finally leave, and the grumbling growl of a voice tell him to get up, to get his shit, and to do it quickly. Silently.

He did not speak, but he stood, and turned toward the woman glaring at him, her eyes sharp as scalpel blades. The bird may have flown off, he didn't know. After the first minute of blood rushing to his face, his vision unfocused and all he saw was a solid blur of sunlight. Vincent crept to the bedroom and fetched his day clothes and rolled them up, looking once as the still-sleeping form of Tommy. Evidently, his mother didn't want him woken, and without a word, or so much as a heavy breath, he left the bedroom and closed it behind him, quiet as he had the first time he left.

Nikolette's door was closed, and he was glad. He wished he could just disappear and never be seen again. Providing Tommy's mother allowed him over again, he had the sneaking suspicion he would be lynched by the girl, and he didn't blame her really. He sighed and bowed his head in shame, scared to meet his mother's gaze. The door to the apartment was open, and he walked through it, without a word. It closed behind him, and he looked back and around, and he did not see her anywhere.

Eh, what the hell was I expecting? He thought as he lumbered down the stairs and ducked into the alcove underneath. His pj's came off quickly, and his day clothes were on without hesitation, sure his t-shirt was on inside out and backwards, but that was trivial, as he pulled it back off and straightened it out. He stepped out from under the steps and to the front door, pushing them both out into the breeze that blew his unkempt hair around his face.

Really, it was a beautiful day – the sun was shining and those birds were still singing as he crossed the parking lot and started the three mile trek back home.

 

His feet ached, and as he looked up from the broken yellow line of the road, there was an ominous pang in his stomach, and his throat clenched. A large crow, black as midnight circled a hundred feet over his head. The scavenger blotted out the sun from Vincent's view, and he could see the bird dip down, waiting to attack.

Vincent looked out of the lawns, acid green in the burning sunlight, and that omniscient bird still cawed overhead. His stomach rumbled with hunger, and for a brief moment he joked in his head about knocking on a random door and asking for breakfast, but his smile faded when he decided it would probably get him shot. He bit the inside of his lip, forgetting where he had bit through, until the pain shot through and tingled into the side of his face. He groaned and pushed on, through the neighbourhoods, toward his home. It was close, and his feet were thankful. He could feel a blister rising on the bottom of his foot, and as he cursed under his breath, he heard the bird caw again.

The crow followed him down the side streets and well-manicured lawns, and as he padded across the cool grass of his lawn, licking at his shins, he tried to decide what to tell his mother. If anything at all, which was the real question. He felt ashamed, not in what he did, but in getting caught, and taking a moment to set on the front porch, he looked out over the heavy bushes, thick with bluish-black berries. They were small and perfectly round.

Vincent plucked one from beneath the shrubbery, his hand beginning to itch as it brushed the coarse foliage. He held the berry between his fingers, head cocked to the side and trying to identify it. There wasn't a chance he was going to eat it, there were the laws of common sense in effect, even though such a small berry could not do much, he still knew better. His parents used to hunt mushrooms, back at the old house in the country, and he had been told of poisonous wildlife. He smiled, and he crushed the berry between his fingers, watching the foul purple juice spill down his finger like gelatinous blood. A couple small seeds hung on thin veins, about half the size of a pot seed, and clung to his skin as he made his decision. Not a word was to be said about why he was home early. Unless that double-wide bitch called. Then, well, then – he didn't know what he'd do.

He rose from the stoop, his ass beginning to ache against the cold stone, and he turned back to the door. On his feet again, he realised that now, his entire body ached, from the bruise swelling on his chest to the scrape across his face, his arms and legs from the walk, and now, the one safe place, his ass, ached from the damn stone. He grumbled something unintelligible and opened the door, into the front room.

It was dark with all the shades drawn, only the hole of light from the open door and the phosphorescent glow from the television, flickering blue against the walls. He almost laughed, at the similarities to this morning, but as his feet carried him into the house, the door closing with a rattle behind him, he knew something was rotten in the state of Denmark. He chewed the inside of his lip again, sharp pain shooting in various directions along the nerve endings, but he ignored the pain as he walked through the room, to the front of the couch where both his parents sat.

Both sets of eyes were open but unmoving, the glassy orbs of their eyes were not wet and glistening in the light of the television, but dull and dry. His stomach clenched and twisted against his bowels. His breath caught in his throat, and he stepped forward, brushing his mother's neck. There was no breath to be felt along the oesophagus, and the jugular was thin and collapsed.

He stood and surveyed his parents, trying to think. Trying to remember what he'd learned in health class, what he'd learned watching those damned medical dramas. He cursed, loud and blatant, it echoed through the house. It was a scream that shook his brain inside his skull, and his chewing moved to the other side of his cheek, pulling a chunk away and filling his mouth with blood. The salted rust taste splashed against his tongue and down his throat.

Vincent remembered, and he apologised to his mother as he undid her jeans and pulled them down her legs, brushing his fingers along the inner thigh with great care not to touch the black lace, to feel his mother's tender places. He tried to find the femoral artery, to no avail, but he didn't need to find it. He could feel it in her flesh, the chill that ran through it, as though someone had pumped blueberry slushy through her veins. He bowed his head and stood. He focused on his shoes, the black leather covered with dust and streaks of cement chalk.

Gathering himself in the centre of his body, he looked around the room, avoiding his parents as they sat on the couch. He would figure something out, he told himself. He knew he could, and he knew he would. He would beat himself into submission until he found some answer.

The police should be telephoned, but he knew the police wouldn't do a damned thing. They would desecrate his mother's body. He had read the news reports, of the corruption and perversion in the cities police force, if they could be called that.  On the way to the store one day, he had discussed it with his mother, and she had told him... she had told him... his brow furrowed, trying to remember. He couldn't, and he wanted to just curl up in the corner and weep like a terrified child. He wanted to leave it all behind, and disappear into the ethereal of death. He couldn't handle this.

But he took a deep breath and centred himself once more.

This – it was not the end, he told himself. He could figure this out, and turning away from the bodies, he turned the television off and sat in front of the entertainment centre, opening one of the faux-wood doors. He searched through the records, old musty vinyl, until he came across a cover with a midget who reminded him of Frank Sinatra, and a handful of street performers. Vincent put side one down, and tracked the needle, cueing up to the last song on side two.

"When the music's over..." the heavy voice said a minute in, and Vincent stood, adjusting the overlarge volume knob on the stereo, letting The Doors fill the small house.

 

Rifling through his father's pockets, Vincent found a pack of smokes with only a couple missing. He breathed a sigh of relief. He didn't smoke much, but he needed one now as he walked through the house, pacing down the hall in thought.

The incoming freshman flipped on all the lights and opened as many curtains as he could, without giving a vantage point to any peeping toms. He grumbled to himself and chain-smoked as he paced, looking at the clock in intervals, as he continually listened to the old Strange Days vinyl. His father had told him there was nothing to compare to vinyl, the warm hiss. People today, they could have their digital files, their hollow music, but he would keep his records. Vincent wanted to laugh, because his father still bought into the digital music, coming on small flashdrives instead of any of the previous formats, but the old turntable and CD player were still jacked into the stereo system, alongside the newer technology. He wanted to laugh at this, at the irony of it, at the aging beast still evolving, but clinging with tooth and nail to the old formats. He wanted to laugh, but as he looked at the back of his father's head, he could not.

He returned to their bodies, and stared at them both, sitting together and oblivious to the world. There were no external marks about their person, no external cause that he could see. It was that the shock was beginning to wear off that he was able to look at them and notice that as they sat there, there was nothing out of the ordinary. Not even drinks or food, he noticed, suspecting poison. He couldn't wrap his head around the fact that they were dead, and as the minutes ticked on, he wanted to know how. Why. Just what the hell had happened? He grumbled again and turned away from them, back to the stereo, and the digital reader.

As much as he may have loved his father's old vinyl, he needed to remove himself from the memories, and began searching through the chips stacked on top of the entertainment centre. Most were less than an inch square of black plastic, while others deviated with colour, standing out amidst the sea of black. It was the red one he sought, burning like a drop of blood, the blood invisible in his parents deaths, and there it was, in the very back. He had to stand on his tip toes and stretch to reach it, but as he fumbled it, it skittered to the front and stopped a hair from the edge. He held it between his fingers, and stared down at it, the small black script almost illegible. That may've been the reason behind the colour variation, maybe. Maybe, but he didn't care. He jacked it into the reader and brushed a finger against the LED lit play sensor.

The girl's chilling voice flooded like a razor through one channel, slowly fading to the other and back to mono. His spine shivered, and his mind gave way with a flood of realisations. All those little fragmented pieces came together, and he looked to the sliding door, the long vertical blinds still drawn.

 

AFTERNOON.

The door to one of the two sheds stood open, and in the three foot gap between the two, he began digging, concealed and in the shade. The sun was high and beating down with merciless heat. Even in that shade, the sweat came in torrents and burned his eyes, and no amount of wiping helped. With each time he raised his fist, he may have swatted the sweat away, but there was something else to burn his eyes... the wet earth in which he was digging that clung to every fibre of his being. From the clothes to his flesh, and he could swear there was a clod lodged in his ear.

In that heat, he rose up from the hole and looked over the top, over the lush green lawn, well-watered and devoid of weeds. The ache he thought he had felt earlier was nothing compared to this, he felt it down to the heart of his bones. He groaned as he felt his vertebrae realign and he watched as an orange tabby cat slinked through the grass, like a lion on the prowl through the desolate plains. The tail was the only real sign of the cat, and Vincent wondered what his cat was stalking. He was reminded... of a film his father had shown him, a film from his own childhood, and a lion father teaching his son to pounce on the talking bird. It made his heart ache, for the father had died. Vincent had wept, openly in front of his father. His father who was now as dead as the baby lion's.

As he knelt back into the hole, with his hands red and raw, he continued the excavation. He could see the darkness begin without looking, that first streak of purple shot overhead, darkening the hole. As he sighed and decided to give up, deciding that it was deep enough, a small lifeless rodent landed at the head of the shovel. His eyes moved up the earthen wall, to the cat that stared down at him, his sandpaper tongue running across his lips. The cat's lamp-like eyes burned in the darkness of the hole, and Vincent tossed the shovel out of the hole, toward the house where it landed on the hard earth with a clatter.

He clambered out of the hole, scraping at the earth with his hands and feet, pushing his body to the surface. As his fingers raked at the earth, he drug his legs from the depths. Finally able to pulls his feet up beneath him, he stood and surveyed the hole and the cat at the lip, still looking down into it.

Vincent didn't trust himself to speak. He motioned for the cat to follow him and made an odd chirp between his tongue and lips. As the backdoor opened, the orange tabby scooted inside, followed by his last remaining owner. The mud had already begun to dry and flake away onto the thick white carpet. The house was cool, and as he stepped down the hall toward the bathroom, he wondered if the cat was sitting in mother's lap. Or running himself between their legs. He bowed his head as he walked into the brightly lit and gleaming bathroom. Soon, the water was pounding the floor of the shower and filling the small room with static.

The medicine cabinet hung over the sink, door closed and reflecting his wary image back at him. Exhausted and sore, his mind strained beyond the capacity for rational thought. He could barely hear the cat scratching at the door, and he reached over to the tank of the toilet, pressing play on whatever chip he had plugged into the small stereo. A twangy Duane Eddy style guitar sizzled from the speakers, and he opened the cabinet, if only to dispose of his damned reflection, but there on the second glass shelf was a small brown bottle with a bright, acid green cap, and he could see it was full of little yellow pills.

He stoppered the drain and emptied those pills into the dry basin of the sink, watching as the flood of yellow skittered across the porcelain and jumped. Pill after pill, he wondered if it'd ever end, and once it did, he picked one out like a bright M&M. As it slid down his parched throat, he gazed down upon the sea of pills, and wondered how many it would take. There were certainly enough. It would make sense. It would make everything – alright. Easier, maybe? He couldn't decide as the inscribed numbers smiled up at him, but turning to the shower and stepping in, he let the scalding water wash over him, clearing the mud and filth from his body, ebbing the ache away from his muscles and bones, but still remained the deep chasm in the epicentre of his chest, where his heart may have once been.

It was as his body became numb to the searing, pounding water that he felt the little yellow pill engage his system, and his perspective shift a hair to the left. Vincent closed his eyes and let the water cascade down his body, enveloping him in a foetal warmth. It was the comfort, he suspected, that was in the womb. It was the most surreal thing he had ever experienced, and as the light seeped through his eyelids, he could see the pieces fall into place, all together. It was, what alcoholics would call, a moment of clarity.

 

EVENING.

By the time he stepped out of the bathroom, the fog had dissipated and the pills had been relocated to their bottle, rattling in his hand as he made his way to his bedroom. Vincent tossed the pills onto the bed and went to the closet. Out the window, he had noticed the sun was gone, that darkness reigned supreme, and he knew the time was nearing. The neighbours would be asleep soon enough. An hour, maybe two, and shortly thereafter, he'd go back out into the backyard. There was the privacy fence, of course, but he still didn't want to take any stupid chances or make any dumb mistakes that would bring the heat down on him. It was the only way.

He had convinced himself of that, that what he was about to do was right. Even if they paid proper respect to the corpses, they still would not honour them in a way that he saw fit. It was the only way, and as the night wore on, he sat between his parents. The smell was ungodly, but as he watched the television, he was able to ignore it. The sound was off, and music still filled the house, from the carpet to the ceiling fan, the music consumed him, filling his veins with rhythm.

It was the cat that made the first move. It was a little after one and Vincent had been dozing, in that space between awake and asleep, letting the music and blue light from the television lull him. It was the claws scratching at the glass that snapped him awake in a panic, and as his heart slowed, he looked between the cat and the digital display of the clock on the wall. His throat was dry and his mouth tasted of lead as he rose of the couch, and turned to face his parents once more. His mother's pants had been returned, and the contents of his father's pockets emptied.

Vincent closed his eyes as he walked through the house once to kill the lights, at least those that would spill forth onto the lawn, and maybe arouse the attention of a sleeping neighbour. Anything that he thought could go wrong, he had accounted for, and planned around. The lights were off, and in the darkness, his mother was little more than a silhouette, and less than a feather in his arms. He kissed her cheek once as he carried her to the double-glass doors.

Her body was laid into the ground, and as he jumped down into the hole, he moved her arms across her abdomen, kissing her once more on the cheek before climbing out and returning for his father. His weight was pulled through the dining room, and out onto the patio. Vincent heard the crack of a twig and froze, his father smacking his head on the concrete. Under the tree, he saw the small pinpricks of the cat, watching him. Vincent could finally breathe, and lifted his father once more under the armpits. Vincent kept his eyes on the cat, and attention to the tree, to try and drown the dead weight dragging across the lawn, the rustle of the grass as his father passed over it. He imagined the odd squelching sound in movies, of a gutted corpse, but there was nothing but the lifeless body of his father.

The positioning of his father's body into the hole was difficult, not wanting to step on his mother, or disrupt her in anyway. It was after several minutes that he finally emerged from the hole, and tossed the first mounds of dirt upon his parents. 

Once he had patted the last clod of dirt in with the head of the shovel, he tossed it to the side, no longer concerned about the noise, and knelt over his mother and father, placing a single handprint in the dirt. With a sigh, he stood and gestured for the cat to follow. It felt familiar, walking into the house dusted with dirt, and returning to the bathroom with the cat at his heel. His body may have a duller, aged ache, and there wasn't the bottle of yellow pills in the sink, but he had been here before. He wiped the dirt away, and stared into the mirror, eyes fixed on the reflection. What had changed was the pain, the deeper pain, and the closure that he felt. He did not shy away from the reflection, he saw the change in his eyes, and the comfort in his body. It was inside him now, as he dressed once more in clean clothes, and hitched a nap sack over his shoulder.

A dull flicker of yellow flames licked at the curtains of the house. All he knew now was that his feet were carrying him to the city, with the feline in his wake like a stalking butler.