Is there no help for the widow’s son?

The day that Jeremy Moore decided to kill his mother was the day that the sky fell in.

Jeremy sat at the window in his attic watching the sky. It looked big. Black. And most definitely angry. The trees whipped around in the unrelenting wind and the pinwheel on the Moore Family mailbox spun madly. Dirt from the driveway was picked up in great swirls of red and brown. Down in the garden, Jeremy could see the scarecrow that he and his younger brother Bobby had made last fall. He had never once seen a crow in their garden that only grew tomatoes, but the scarecrow had seemed like a fun, if somewhat pointless, idea at the time. Jeremy watched as the scarecrow’s floppy hat was ripped off his head and thrown into the wind.

He pushed his hand against the foggy window and relished the feeling of the frigid glass against his palm. Jeremy had always loved the cold. The rain tattooed its rhythmic pattern. He could feel it in his hand. In his chest. In his head.

Once his fingers were numbed, he pressed them against the cut on his lip from where his mother had slammed his face into the kitchen counter. He hadn’t meant to burn the roast, honest. He just forgot. Jeremy forgot a lot of things. Lately, it had become increasingly difficult for him to even remember his own name.

His fingers were warmed again in no time, but he kept his hand against his lips, just barely brushing the cut with his fingertips. The shiver of pain felt good. Cleansing. It made him feel real. Alive. More alive than he had been in what felt like hundreds of years. That’s when he got the idea.

He would kill his mother. Yes. He’d kill her and she’d never be able to hurt him ever again.

The idea slipped into his head so easily that Jeremy had to repeat it out loud, just to make sure it was real. “I’ll kill her. I’ll kill her dead.” He smiled. It sounded good on his tongue. He liked how it made his lip crack and burn when he said it. “Kill her dead.”

Jeremy stood and looked out the window, down into the garden once more. The scarecrow’s bag-head dipped a silent nod, his black button eyes seeming to stare at Jeremy, egging him on. Daring him to do it. This was all the affirmation Jeremy needed.

He practically bounced down the attic stairs. He felt life’s fire burning bright in his chest, willing away the cold. He passed his brother’s room where Bobby was laying on the floor, contentedly drawing on a scrap of white paper and humming to himself. Jeremy could see the life fire in his chest too, but it paled in comparison to his own. His own fire could rival the sun’s.

He passed his mother, laying on the couch in the living room, watching television. Jeremy noted with satisfaction that she didn’t have a fire, and that made him smile.

“Where are you going?” she asked him, her eyes never waving from the flashing colors on the tv screen.

Jeremy stopped in his tracks, his hand on the screen door latch. Without turning, he said, “Just outside, mommy.” He grinned and stifled a laugh by biting his lip, the scab over the cut pulling away in his teeth. Blood beaded at the break. Jeremy let it run a little before licking it clean.

“It’s about to storm, you know,” she said as she reached for her can of Pepsi on the coffee table in front of her. She put it to her lips and tossed it back. With a frown, she held the can in front of her and shook it impatiently, her way of making sure that the can was not deceiving her and it was, in fact, empty. It made a dull rattling sound from the tab that Jeremy’s mother had popped and dropped inside the can, a habit of hers.

He nodded. “I know. I’m just bringing the wash in off the line.” How easy the lie came to him! It was if he had a little person that sat on his shoulder and whispered in his ear, telling Jeremy what to say and do. He shrugged his shoulder. It felt the same.

She waved her hand in his direction, dismissing him. “Sure, just get me another soda when you come back in.”

Grinning like a madman now, Jeremy replied, “Of course, mommy.” Without another word, he unhooked the screen door and pushed it open, along with the wooden one that lay just beyond it, letting it slam behind him with a ‘smack!’

He stood on the top of the concrete steps that led from his house to the grassy backyard, and stared up at the sky. The clouds rolled past faster than Jeremy could blink. Thunder cracked, muffled by both distance and the buzzing in his ears. A fat drop of rain plopped onto his forehead and dribbled down the bridge of his nose. He didn’t mind though: he had always liked the rain. It was almost better than the cold. Almost. But not quite.

Jeremy stepped down off the steps and onto the grass, his feet squelching in the wet earth. He passed by the clothes drying on the line, the two shirts and a bed sheet dampened again by the rain. But it didn’t matter. He had never had any intention of collecting them. Instead, he made his way to the woodshed, a crooked little shack that lay just inside the property line. More specifically, he made his way around to the side of the woodshed, to the old tree stump where he chopped wood to fuel the fire in the furnace…

Lightning flashed, the blade shining as Jeremy turned the axe over and over again in his hands, feeling its weight, testing his swing. He would cut her like she cut him. “‘As you sow, so shall you reap’…” Jeremy said softly as he slowly walked back inside…

His mother had never screamed. Not once. A fact that had greatly disappointed Jeremy.

She had seen him coming towards her; smiling happily, his hair wet and plastered to his face, the axe raised high over his head. Her eyes widened and her mouth dropped open, but she never screamed. Not even a little yelp of anguish. Nothing.

It wasn’t that Jeremy hadn’t given her a chance. No, he had taken his time with her. First starting on her hands, slicing every finger clean off. Every finger that had ever pinched or poked him. Next, he went to work on her legs. She only kicked him with her right foot, but he got rid of both, just in case. It took a couple of whacks, but he got the job done. What a great motivator rage was.

After all that, she was barely alive anyway, so Jeremy decided to finish her off. He buried the axe deep in her chest and left it there, dark red blood oozing around the blade and onto her shirt, down the couch, until it reached the growing puddle on the floor.

He backed away to admire his work. Exhaling, he looked at his hands. They were covered in her blood. He rubbed them together, back and forth, feeling them slide around.

“W-what did you do, Jer?”

Jeremy turned, his hands still clasped together. Bobby was standing in the doorway to the living room. White-faced and scared, he looked so small to Jeremy as he stood there trembling, his teary eyes flickering from his mother’s body to Jeremy, and then back, a tiny paper heart clutched in his left hand.

Jeremy unlocked his hands and held one out to his brother. Bobby looked at the offered hand and took a small step backwards into the hallway. “What did you do, Jer?” he repeated, this time, his voice no louder than a whisper.

“Don’t worry,” Jeremy assured him. He took several swift steps forward, taking Bobby off-guard, and grabbed him by the shoulders. “She’s just sleeping.” He pushed his little brother forward until he was at their mother’s side, the blood staining his tiny, white sneakers.

Bobby curiously reached a hand out and brushed the axe handle with his fingertips. As if he had gotten an electric shock, he drew his hand back and turned his head away, his eyes squeezed shut. “No she’s not!” he sobbed, hot tears rolling down his chubby cheeks and landing on Jeremy’s hand. “You… you killed her, Jer.”

“Shhh… Don’t cry.” Jeremy removed his hands from Bobby’s shoulders. He found his brother’s hands and took them in his own; the paper heart that Bobby had held fell to the floor, forgotten. “You wanna try?” Jeremy guided the smaller set of hands to the axe with no resistance and wrapped them around the handle. He then placed his hands around the handle as well on either side of Bobby’s. “Now pull hard,” he instructed him.

With a squish, the axe came free from their mother’s chest, causing both boys to stagger backwards slightly, Bobby pushing his back against Jeremy’s chest extra hard as he tried to avoid the deluge of fresh blood pouring from the wound.

Jeremy slowly released his hold on the axe, letting Bobby hold it by himself. The little boy tipped forward as he raised the blade, but Jeremy was there to offer a reassuring nudge. “Swing hard and fast, okay?”

Bobby nodded slowly. He looked over his shoulder and grinned at his brother. “‘Hard and fast,’” he repeated.

Be beautiful and review, darlings. Ta!