Bachelor Pad

Craig was again moved to a new place, guided by the blink, the shift and placement influenced by his thoughts. He studied his surroundings, taking in the danger level. The darkness was the only factor that remained a constant. The sliver of light, a square, was the only indication he was far away from the sanitarium and the two Krones. The musical humming urged him into an erect position. His back, shoulders, and head bumped into boxes. Dust was disturbed, and he coughed on it.

The humming stopped.

He froze.

And then the humming started again. A wet schick followed the return of the humming.

Shick-shick-shick-shick-shick.

The sound was rhythmic, on time.

He gathered the courage to move again, having to know what was happening. He peered at the line of light in the corner. He couldn’t see anything yet.

Wait.

This is the crawlspace.

The humming wasn’t from Brandon. His father wasn’t the type to hum or sing. Maybe to get laid he’d do it. That meant his mom was out there. He craved her comfort. The warmth of her hug, and the humming, the ability to soothe was a motherly instinct she could wield to perfection.

He worked his way out of the boxes, pushing them aside, and barged through the door. He stopped before revealing himself to his mother.

This is too easy.

“Where are you, Dr. Krone?”

Did the doctor know he had trespassed into his mind? And if he did, what form of retribution would he take?

If I die here, what happens to me in that room? Will I decay like those other bodies?

The door was thrown open from the other side before he could work out a solution. “Oh, there you are, kiddo.”

Tina grabbed him by the arms and dragged him out. He was a child again. He couldn’t have been older than ten. He issued a high-pitched scream. Tina held his lips shut. The tang of blood met his nose, and Craig gasped, looking at her face and the red pasted on it. Blood clung to her shirt and painted her body like she’d bathed in it. Her hair was standing on end in sections and was pasted to her scalp in others. Tina’s eyes were wide, her mouth drawn in a straight line but it quivered. She contained her amusement, a secret pleasure. Something brewed inside of her that had yet to be released.

The source of the blood was still a mystery, but the blood itself was well utilized. Large red X’s crossed out Brandon’s super model and playmate posters. The thick slashes dribbled onto the floor, fresh. Brandon’s Budweiser can fridge was knocked onto the ground, the cans inside littering the floor.

“This is my room now,” she shouted out with the zest of a seven-year-old. “I’m the decorator. What do you think, Craig? I’ll let you come down whenever you like. I had to make some changes first. Brandon let me…after we talked. Parker guided me through it. He told me what to do with your father. We can be together now. No more secrecy and Parker will love you like a son.” Under her breath, “For the first time you’ll feel a father’s love.”

Tina’s hands squished within his. It wasn’t only blood. Gobs of flesh were tangled between the notches of her fingers. The adult statement was foreign through the mouth of a child. “Mom…what have you done to Dad? What did Parker tell you to do?”

The thrill continued to sparkle in her eyes. “Parker said God would look the other way, and God did.” She was whispering now. “Parker knows God’s feelings. And now I know God too. You should get to know God. I’ve brought Dad directly to God, and God can deal with him.”

Under the green fixture that shone onto the pool table—the only source of light on in the entire room—was Brandon’s body. His throat had been gouged through numerous times. Brandon’s eyes were affixed on nothing, wide open. The eyes screamed terror and agony but the rest of his face was limp. He’d turned blue and pale, losing much blood. A seven-inch steak knife was laid out on the green carpet alongside Brandon’s straight razor. Strips of flesh similar to the thin slices of a carrot peeler were taken from Brandon’s naked back.

Craig curled into himself, repulsed. Tina tightened her grip on his hand to the point his bones protested. “Ah, you’re hurting me!”

Tina shrieked, triggered by his reaction, “And your father hurt me! He tore my heart out. I caught him sticking his dick in a random stranger. I was walking to the grocery store, and I noticed our car parked outside a hotel. I fought my way inside, and there was the slut spent and ready to go home. Cum and wash bitch, that whore, that slut, that fucking diseased bitch, only my husband could find something attractive about her. I acted like I’d forgiven him. I brought us home. Then I remembered what Parker said about bringing Brandon to God.” She paused, licking her dried lips. “That’s when I stabbed him in the throat.”

She looked to him for acceptance and understanding. “This was what you wanted for me, Craig. Remember?—don’t you remember? You said he didn’t deserve me. You were right. Now he can’t have me. I can be happy now.”

Tina snarled and returned to the pool table. She picked up the straight razor and began flensing strips of skin from Brandon’s spine and between his shoulder blades, the blade clicking against bone with each swipe. “He’s slept with so many women. He’s dirty. I’m sure he’s passed something on to me. He didn’t make love to me with real passion. But Parker, he’s a real man. I’m his one and only.”

She shaved down the back of Brandon's head and removed a long cut of meat. Craig abhorred the sight, internally shrinking from the sight. Tina expressed more joy than he’d ever seen, and it disgusted him. “Dr. Krone taught me this trick.”

Both his fists tightened at his name. “What did he say to you? When did he talk to you, Mom?” He closed in, grabbing her by both arms to steal her attention. “Christ, speak up—tell me right now!”

Tina’s eyes, Tina’s smile, Tina’s brow, everything about her face went crooked. The shadows gnarled the blood stains on her face. It looked like she’d been the one who was bleeding. “He said simply stabbing him in the throat wasn’t good enough. I’d regret not torturing him more—even though he’s already dead. Parting the skin, I’m shaving him clean. He’ll be a good man when there’s nothing left of him. The doctor said that’s the only way for a devious man to make a fresh start. Clean. Pure. Without sin—oh wait, the sin part was Parker’s talk, not the doctor’s.”

She glared at him, her joy suddenly draining, her smile fading into a frown. She growled, “I see your father in you. You’ll be just like him soon, Craig.” A whimper of fear, her eyes shirked from him, and then they returned, staring at him like he was stranger, someone to harm. “I can’t let you go, Craig. You’ll break another girl’s heart.” She tightened her stare. “Poor Katie. You were supposed to be a man. You let her bleed to death. It’s your fault your wife and baby died.”

She cast her head down, mourning his ineptitudes. “But your mistakes hurt others, Craig. You could potentially harm another girl that may come into your life.” The next words caused the hairs on the nape of his neck to stand. “I must save you. Cleanse you like I cleansed your daddy.”

The motherly role was distorted. She had consoled him when Katie died in real life. She was the major factor in moving on versus wallowing in self-pity and guilt, and now, she was taking back that gift.

Shick-shick-shick-shick-shick.

Brandon’s scalp was bared to the skull, Tina carving the straight razor with precision and determination. She slapped the skin onto the floor, wringing her hands of the flesh.

Unable to speak, forcing himself to act, his body weighing double what it used to, his limbs cooperating only because he demanded his nerves to respond, he launched across the basement to escape. Tina leapt over the pool table, posing like a crawling spider on all fours, and she landed onto his back, tackling him from behind. On the way down, the straight razor sliced across the back of his neck, and the skin parted audibly, punctuated by the heavy flow of warm blood.

“I know what you did,” she accused, shrieking at alarming octaves. “Of the things you’d do in your mind, you slept with Susan. Wouldn’t you rather sleep with your wife?—or no, that’s right. You’re just like your father. Can’t keep his dick to himself. And soon you’ll be just like him.”

Craig whipped around, turning from his side, and seizing the arm poised to slice him again, he shoved her backwards by the jaw, her body flopping onto the floor. “Dr. Krone’s putting you up to this. It’s not you, Mom!”

“Your mind is the greatest place to venture,” she said, her words spittle-heavy, her eyes slanted and flickering with unreal emotion. “You want to throw this opportunity away on bullshit fantasies. You don’t really want to cure yourself of your anger.”

“You’re the one who’s deciding the outcomes, not me. You put me in those situations.” Craig clenched his fists, bent to fight off his mother at the first indication of another attack. “I want out of my mind and back into my body. I’m done, you hear me, Doctor, I’m finished!”

The Browning shotgun materialized in his hands. He gripped it tight so as not to drop it, the weapon heavy and real. He was an adult again too, all in a blink’s time. She admired him with distaste, her desire to cut him up realized once again. “All I see is your father in you. You’re not my child. Not if his blood is in your veins.”

She raised the straight razor, posed to swipe it across his throat.

He raised the gun, reminding himself this wasn’t his real mother. She was alive somewhere else and out of harm’s way. “Stay back or I’ll shoot!”

Inching closer, her legs became springs, ejecting her forward, a wild shaleeeeeh escaping her lungs as her voice matched her animal mentality to maim.

Ba-boom!

Knowing he wasn’t harming a real person, pulling the trigger was easy, but the effect was too real. The impact rendered her face inside out, the bullet spray chewing away any familiarity of his mother.

She wasn’t deterred from the attack. Tina had one eye she could view him through beneath a blackened and bleeding pulp for a face. The other eye was pink socket tissue and smashed retina and orb. Her lips had disintegrated, both rows of teeth shattered or fractured and bared. She swallowed the remains of her tongue in a thick gulp. Pointing the straight razor at him again, Craig picked up his feet and bounded up the stairs, knowing if the shotgun blast didn’t deter her, nothing could.

Tina chased him down, her steps thundering behind him in pursuit. The words about Katie still burned him, and true or not, his mother had spoken them, and he’d taken them in. There wasn’t time to think about it, his neck bleeding down his shirt and turning cold. Afternoon sunlight poured through the windows of his childhood home. The beacon of safety, his haven, was demurred. His guts churned at the noises coming from outside. Screams and unrelenting rounds of torture played out in the front yard. He couldn’t stop now, despite his reservations. Tina charged behind him, forcing him to retreat into the living room, still at his heels, slashing the air, spilling blood onto the floor with each effort, Craig had no choice but to throw open the front door and flee outside.