A Della Note:

So, this is rated M for cursing, violence, descriptions of murder, and religious parody. Yes, that is correct. Religious parody. I don’t think it will be terrible, but there is a character that will be constantly made fun of for her faith. Before you get offended, I promise, the chick’s a psycho zealot. The teasing is justice. But if you do take offense, totally write me and chew me out. I will apologize immensely or something.

“Memento Mori” means “Remember you are mortal” a.k.a. “Remember you will die”. Curiously enough, a band called The Bastard Fairies has an album called Memento Mori, and a certain politically incorrect song called “We’re All Going to Hell”. Check it out on youtube while reading. Tis so cute!

Enough of my ramblings! For a full summary of this crazy little story, please check my profile.

If you dare.

&

The Fishburne car was going twenty miles over the speed limit, but there were no cops on the country road to do anything. Foster Fishburne was driving, his foot glued to the accelerator. His forehead rumpled dramatically and his eye twitched just the slightest. In the passenger seat, his wife stared ahead with a wide, vacant gaze.

“Why are we going so fast?” she asked in her subdued monotone. Her gaze didn’t shift and, oddly, she didn’t blink. Ever.

Foster took a moment to consider his reasons for speeding. Was he eager to get back to his hometown, or was he trying to get as far away from the crime scene in the least amount of time as possible? He decided on the former. “I’m excited, sweetums. Do you see the kids anywhere?”

She did not respond. She didn’t blink either, but that was as per usual.

“I guess they just had to make a pit stop,” Foster said, almost to himself. His two older children were driving in Asher’s Mercury, supposedly behind the family car, but they weren’t anywhere to be seen.

In the backseat, the three younger Fishburne children sat in silence. Muriel sat to the left, just behind the driver’s seat. She breathed against her window and watched the fiberglass fog up. She drew a little stick figure in the moisture, then watched as it disappeared. She breathed against the glass pane again, and this time drew a tiny smiling face. It too disappeared. She breathed against the glass a third time, drawing a cross with her pinky figure. Although it disappeared like its preceded figures, Muriel could swear she still saw its shape.

“The power of Jesus,” she whispered to herself, and grinned secretly before pinching B.D.’s arm. The youngest Fishburne child did not flinch—she was too deep in sleep.

B.D. hardly ever slept; perhaps three or four hours a week. She had been saving up for the car ride, as she could almost never contain herself during road trips. She was far too excitable. Her head was leaned against Muriel’s shoulder, and she had propped her legs up on Harry’s lap.

Harry was the middle Fishburne child—a young adult in society’s view. He stared out the window weakly and kept his headphones around his ears. He didn’t own any CDs—not since the fire—but he liked to pretend to listen to music on his walkman anyway. The illusion of being normal was comforting to him. He glanced at B.D., checking to make sure she was still knocked out.

The little girl was dreaming, her eyes rolling around underneath her eyelids. Harry had drawn a French moustache just above her upper lip an hour earlier, using Muriel’s eye liner. Instead of revenge for all the nights B.D. had watched him sleep, Harry felt as if he had just made his little sister look cuter. She would probably wake up and like the faux moustache so much, she wouldn’t want to wash it off.

In the driver’s seat, Foster began to hum a little. The road became serpentine and rocky as they entered Foster’s small hometown, Nettleknife. He curled his lips into a smile, but looked borderline frightening. He was an old man with pot marks in his face and wrinkles in places it is best not to have wrinkles.

He hadn’t been home since he was a young man, and it felt like déjà vu, the way the sunset seemed dimmer and how the crows covered every high-up flat surface like a pile of ants—always more there than at first glance. They covered the roof tops, the power lines, the poles, the trees. Crows everywhere, like locus. Like a plague. Foster whistled lowly to himself. “It’s all coming back to me,” he chuckled.

His wife said nothing, but she did enjoy the crows. She had never been this far up north before, and was quite startled by the scenery. The way frost caked the slate roofs, and the way the grass lawns seemed dead and rotted and frozen. There were large gaps of land between the clusters of homes and businesses, and she had seen just one sole gas station in the entire town. She felt a headache bloom in the back of her skull.

And her eyes stung from not blinking.

The car hit a rather deep bunk in the road and everyone jolted to attention. In the back, B.D. rolled up in awareness, jumping off her siblings’ respected bodies. She shook for a moment, as if still exiting R.E.M., then sprang into her natural energy. One glance in her dad’s rearview mirror and she cracked a smile. “Hey guys, I hit puberty!”

Her mother’s eyes revolved slowly to stare at her youngest child’s pale face in the rearview mirror.

“Who drew that on your face?” Mrs. Fishburne’s voice was sluggish and uninterested. Harry thought his mother didn’t particularly care who had done the deed, but she felt obliged to seem concerned.

B.D. tried twitching her mouth to make the moustache dance. “I look like an evil villain.”

Muriel smiled, smugly. She was of the firm opinion that everyone was an evil villain, especially her sister. B.D. was just too energetic for her taste.

Harry noticed Muriel smiling. He could swear he saw her lips form the word heathen.

Their car sped along the highway, each person admiring the arid sights outside the window glass. B.D. felt that winter was an unfortunate time of the year—too cold to play outside. She sighed as she noticed the sloshy, suspiciously snow-like substance on the ground. “Is that what I think it is?” she asked Muriel.

“It’s frost,” Muriel said. She liked frost; it meant there would be snow. She liked winter, thinking of it as her most powerful season. She always felt lighter somehow when it was cold. It was her element.

“This is my suburb,” Foster said in the front, bringing everyone back from their respective states of mind. He sounded like a little boy, all cheered up to be back home.

“We’re almost there?” his wife asked, with a little air of hope in her voice. She did not like being in the car like this. She much preferred a home-like setting.

“Almost there,” Foster sang, and the joy in his voice was droll. At least, Harry thought so. “Do you kids want to see your school first, or go straight to grandma’s house?”

“School?” Muriel’s eyebrows rose, causing a single line of worry to impregnate her forehead. “What do you mean?”

“High school,” Foster smiled at her from the front, glancing into the rearview mirror to see her disturbed face. “Nettleknife High, home of the Hurricanes.”

Harry glanced away from the scenery to give his dad a look of horror.

“For the girls, Harry. I won’t make you repeat senior year. We can look up all the local colleges when we get to home.”

The word home made Harry’s heart sink. His home was a burned down pile of ash, four hours south from Nettleknife. His home was with Abbey, or whatever was left of her.

“I don’t have to go to school either,” Muriel leaned against her father’s seat, praying her fate wouldn’t be sealed.

“We’ll see,” Foster sang out, his voice oozing with little-boy happiness. “You’ll really love it here, Muriel. Lots of churches.”

“What kind of churches?”

“The religious ones.”

The car bumped and jittered with each upset groove and ridge in the road. Foster’s wife was beginning to feel queasy. “Please hurry home,” she said.

Without pressing the brake, Foster side-swerved into a lane, then turned onto a little road. Small brick houses with broken shell driveways and barren trees began to litter the world.

“Virginia Street,” Foster said, informing the others while turning onto a very small gravel-paved road leading to what seemed like a dead end and a copse of trees. “Know why they call it that?”

No one spoke. B.D. began to pick her nose, stealthily.

“For Virginia Asher Fishburne, my mother. Our house is the only house on this street, besides the Silas’s. But they were dirt poor last time I checked. No way could Mr. Silas could name this street after his wife.”

And still no one spoke. The car pulled up to a two-story house with a porch and another broken shell driveway. Foster put the car in park and killed the engine, jumping out of his seat. The others followed quickly, seeing as no Fishburne wore a seatbelt. It was freezing outside the warm car’s quarters, and everyone clasped their jackets tighter.

“This is grandma’s house?” B.D. asked skeptically. This was not the beautiful, biggest house in Nettleknife home her father had made it out to be.

“This is our new place,” Foster smiled. He noticed the blue car in the driveway, and the light on in the house’s parlor. “C’mon Fishes, the real estate lady’s awaiting.” He spoke with an aspiring local accent.

All of the present Fishburnes besides B.D. looked at him with pure terror. B.D. giggled.

Inside, a plump woman with glasses and an eight year old in a stuffed jacket were sitting awkwardly on a blue striped loveseat. The woman seemed to break a sweat the second the family entered through the unlocked front door.

“Mr. Fishburne,” she sprung to life as if relieved. “I’m Dina Paulsen—spoke to you on the phone—what a charming family you have.” Her voice was practiced, nervous, and seemingly coin-operated. She glanced at every Fishburne face, taking in each one.

First she looked at Foster, whom she disregarded easily as an older man than herself. He had wrinkles in places she didn’t like, so it was easy for her to shift focus to the next face. Samantha Fishburne, the wife, looked like a mid-life crisis on a platter, tired and bored and bitter. The next face was of a very pale girl with five greasy dreadlocks. She looked solemn and strange in the little parlor, like an abnormality or a sore. Mrs. Paulsen decided she didn’t like the looks of her.

The next two were much better. The boy was cute, she decided, even though a little pale and frowning ghastly. The little girl, on the other hand, was hands down the prettiest little thing Mrs. Paulsen had ever seen. Even cuter than her own Kayla.

“You are just so cute,” Mrs. Paulsen smiled at B.D. “You’re like a little painted doll. Is there something on your face?” She closely inspected the girl’s upper lip.

B.D. leered at her with the biggest, meanest smile she could muster. “Arigato.” She pointed to the little girl still sitting on the loveseat. “Who’s that?”

“That’s my daughter Kayla,” Mrs. Paulsen’s voice was light and bubbly and designed for a small child. “Would you like to play with her while I talk to your parents?”

B.D. did not answer, but took to Kayla like a rocket. “Exploration,” she gave the briefest of explanations as she took the meek girl’s hand, squeezed it tightly, and darted through the parlor to the rest of the house.

“It’s just like I remembered,” Foster whispered, touching his wife’s shoulder. She responded in an unintelligible mumble.

Muriel shoved her elbow deep inside the surface of Harry’s stomach, and then walked out the room with him taking the hint to follow. Mrs. Paulsen smiled. “Did you all have an okay time trying to get here?”

“Sure did,” Foster grinned, taking note of Mrs. Paulsen’s accent and trying to imitate it.

“Well I’m glad,” she grinned back, although a little ill at ease, wondering if he was mocking her. “On the phone, you said you had five children, right?”

“Sure do,” Foster nodded enthusiastically. “Those three are our youngest, and my two oldest are on their way. Asher and Abigail. Asher’s named after my mother, did you know that? Her maiden was Asher.”

“I knew Virginia very well, actually,” Mrs. Paulsen’s forehead crumpled. “I was so shocked when I heard about—,”

Foster saw this as a time to spread the seed of his plan. “And my oldest daughter’s name is Abigail. Abbey for short. She’s coming here too. She’s twenty four years old, and she’s on her way. Did you know that?”

“No,” Mrs. Paulsen looked a little ruffled. “I didn’t. Miss Virginia, Mr. Fishburne, was a wonderful woman. I knew her so well. I even went to her funeral yesterday, Mr. Fishburne. It was so sad. I wish you could have attended, but—,”

“I say,” he interjected, “This old place is just like I remembered it. Just like I remembered. The old bat didn’t do a stitch of redecorating, did she?”

Mrs. Fishburne was at her husband’s side, not blinking. She stared idly at Mrs. Paulsen, who seemed a little jolted by Foster’s gusto.

“Abigail is going to love this place. Just l-o-v-e it. She’s such a great kid, did you know that, Mrs. Paulsen? I sure wish you could meet her, because I doubt you will unless she shows up in a minute, but golly would you think she’s just a doll too.”

Mrs. Paulsen frowned, a little confused.

“She’s got…she’s got—what is it, honey?”

“Acute anxiety,” Mrs. Fishburne answered dryly.

“Acute anxiety. Even her condition’s adorable sounding. She sure is a great kid. But she doesn’t like getting out much—this whole moving experience is a lot for her. She just doesn’t like getting out.”

Mrs. Paulsen’s nerve grew. “You said your family wouldn’t be providing any furniture, correct, Mr. Fishburne? On the phone, you said everything was destroyed in the fire at your old home, correct?”

“Sure is. So glad all my family came out alive,” he laughed. “That would have been a tragedy. To lose my mother and a member of my immediate family in the same week. What a shame that would have been.”

Mrs. Paulsen nodded. “What a tragedy. What courage.”

“What luck!” Foster boomed. “What strange twisted sort of luck is it that my house burned down and my mother died within a single week? What convenience that the day I lose my own home, I inherit my dear mother’s? What kind of a world is this?”

Mrs. Fishburne blinked. She actually blinked. It was for a single moment, but it stirred Mrs. Paulsen into gear.

“Here are your new keys, Mr. and Mrs. Fishburne. Here they are,” she handed a ring of keys to the couple. She began her organized speech, spouting off like a machine gun. “I apologize that all the mirrors and paintings are gone, but to pay off some of Miss Virginia’s funeral bills, they just had to be sold. My deepest sympathy for your immense loss. If you have any questions about the home, you come and see me at my office. Do you still have my card, Mr. Fishburne?”

“I sure do,” he smiled.

“I sure wish you all the best of luck,” she smiled kindly, then called out for her daughter. The sound of little footsteps on the second floor echoed.

“I sure do hope you like it,” Mrs. Paulsen speed-talked, “And if any more of those police men come here, you just tell them that you’re Miss Virginia’s son and you are lawfully and legally the custodian of her property. You have every right to be here, Mr. Fishburne. You and your immediate family. And if there are any reporters buzzing around here, you tell them to get off your property. It sure is your property now.”

“Reporters?” this was B.D.’s question, as she asked from the parlor doorway. She was covered in dust and had the left side of her mustache smeared. Kayla was behind her, with a drawn on moustache and goatee to match.

“Kayla,” Mrs. Paulsen said, but then thought better of scolding her own daughter in front of the Fishburnes. “Yes, sweetie,” she said to B.D. lightly, “There are bound to be plenty of reporters all over the place. Your grandmother—,”

She stopped, biting onto her words. At first, it appeared as though she might break into tears, but instead she turned to Foster and Samantha and gave them a questioning look.

Foster nodded, eagerly.

Mrs. Paulsen sighed. “Your grandmother’s murder was a little too shocking for this town, sweetheart. The whole Nettleknife County is a little shook up.”

“Why?” B.D asked earnestly. She knew why, but she wanted to see this lady squirm.

And squirm she did. “It was a bit scary—for all of us adults—what happened to your grandmother. Her death was just a bit different, that’s all.”

“Different? You mean being dismembered?” B.D. asked.

“You ready, Kayla?” Mrs. Paulsen asked in a very high, high voice.

Kayla stepped towards her mother and was snatched up into a race to leave as Mrs. Paulsen shouted over her shoulder, “Like I said, Mr. Fishburne, call me if there’s any trouble. You all take good care!”

She and Kayla walked out the door, with just shreds of their former punctured politeness, just as a black Mercury car pulled up and blocked the driveway. A boy that resembled the rest of the family hopped out of the passenger seat, and Mr. Fishburne was instantly at Mrs. Paulsen’s side.

“That’s my oldest boy, Asher,” he said. “And this,” he gestured to a young woman stepping out of the car on the driver’s side. “This is Abigail, my daughter.”

Abigail Fishburne was tall, blonde and tan—nothing at all like the other Fishburnes.

“Pleasure to see them,” Mrs. Paulsen spoke quickly. “But they’re blocking my car.”

“Abigail,” Foster rang out to the girl. He had to shout her name twice for her to look up. “Would you be so kind as to quit blocking the damned driveway?”

The blonde got back into the car and started it up, rolling backwards a little before parking again. The young man—Asher—stood in the dead lawn, admiring the place. Or staring at it in horror. One or the other.

Mrs. Paulsen walked down the porch steps with little Kayla in tow. She smiled and waved and got a good look at the oldest Fishburnes before strapping her daughter in her car and getting in. She drove away calmly, but Foster knew she was all jello-like, wherever she had gone to.

“This is grandma’s house, Dad?” Asher asked from across the lawn. Abigail got out of Ash’s car and walked towards him, putting and arm around his waist before kissing his cheek lightly.

“This is it!” Foster grinned. “C’mon in, kids!”

&

FIN
(of chapter one)

RAWR. That was a beast. I’m not sure if it was too slow or too quick or if the pacing was just plain putrid, but I feel like I just ran a marathon. But this is pretty much what I’ve been working on while procrastinating Sharpen Your Tongue.

“Muriel’s eyebrows rose, causing a single line of worry to impregnate her forehead.” WTF at my writing. Just thought you should know I disliked that line. And yet, I’m attached to it.

Thanks for reading!