Sins Of The Mother (Chapter-8)

The man was off today, and he had a lot of work to do.

He wolfed down his breakfast and dressed quickly. Next, a call to make sure the second-hand store was going to be open since it was Sunday. They confirmed they would be open between one and five.

A few hours later, he was sitting in his car in the lot of Rerun Antiques thinking about things he could use. He would have to plan carefully.

Something inside him that he had managed to keep suppressed for years had finally made its way to the surface, and now that events had begun to unfold, he needed to be methodical. So far, everything had gone according to plan. But he couldn’t afford to get sloppy now.

He looked at his watch. The store should be open. He walked the short distance to the front door. The bell overhead jingled cheerfully, and a man who looked to be in his mid-50s called out a welcome. The man looked as old as the interior of the store, and just as messy. The place was a wreck. It needed repairs in several places.

“Can I help you?” the man asked.

“Thanks, I’m just looking.”

“Okay, sing out if you need anything. I own the place, so I know where everything is.”

He nodded. He didn’t know exactly what he was looking for. He needed a prop of some kind to allay suspicion. There were several possibilities, but each had complications associated with them. Finally, he spotted something that might be perfect. He walked over and stood in front of what appeared to be surveying equipment.

“None of it works,” the proprietor said as he walked up.

“Excuse me?”

“The pieces you’re looking at. They don’t work.”

“I may know somebody who can fix them. How much?”

“Considering the condition, I’ll let you have all of it for fifty dollars plus tax.”

“Sold.”

He carried the equipment to the register, took the money from his wallet, and handed it to the owner.

“Thanks. Come back now, Ya here?” The owner was clearly happy with his end of the deal, and he waved and smiled. The man nodded politely, picked up the equipment, and walked out of the store. There was still much to do.

He drove the green sedan down the gravel road on the outskirts of Kingsport. Keeping his eyes on the road as much as possible, he occasionally looked at the houses off to the side. He’d found the address a week earlier on the internet and had been in the area briefly a couple of times. He made a left turn onto Jankins Loop and found a spot where he could see the house without being too conspicuous. The overgrown fence rows around the farmland and fields helped conceal him. He pulled the car over and parked.

He reached over to open the glove box and took out the small pair of camouflaged binoculars. Holding them to his eyes, he turned the focusing knob on top and brought the building sharply into view. Curtains covered the windows, obscuring any view of the house’s interior. 

He got out of the car, removed the equipment and placed it on the hood of the car. The house was directly north of the tree line where the cameras were to be placed. Walking down the road and back, he attempted to imitate the surveyors he had seen along the roads. Once he had a clear picture of where the cameras were to be placed, he eased them from the bag lying in the back seat of the sedan and secured them, making sure they were pointed at the rear and sides of the house.

He checked the cameras one last time, then packed up his props and left the area the way he had come in, completely undetected. Mission accomplished, he thought to himself.

He loaded the equipment, got into his car, and headed back to the main road toward the city. He began having flashbacks. He didn’t know what triggered them, but they were vivid. He thought of nights alone in his bedroom, listening into the morning as his mother had sex with yet another man. He could hear the sounds the drunk men made – the disgusting grunts and moans – as they pawed at his mother.

But most of all, he remembered the night she tried to kill him. He’d been taking a bath after having played until dark at a park a few blocks from the run-down rental house he shared with her. He was 12 years old, and it was late summer. School was about to start back. He heard her come in through the kitchen, and the next thing he knew the bathroom door opened. The lock didn’t work. He could smell cigarette smoke and alcohol on her as soon as she staggered in and knew she’d been at her favorite bar, a dive called The Silver Saddle. She took two steps into the bathroom and slipped on some water that had sloshed out of the tub onto the cheap, linoleum floor. She banged her right shoulder into the wall and wound-up face down on her belly.

“Are you all, right?” he said. He didn’t call her Momma or Mom or Mother. He didn’t call her by name. He didn’t call her anything. When he wanted her attention, he just said, “Hey!”

“You little bastard,” she hissed. “I’ve had about all I can take…”

She came off of the floor and lunged at him. Her hands went around his neck, and she pushed his head under the water. He flailed and splashed and squirmed and finally, probably because she was so drunk, managed to get himself free. He scrambled out of the tub and out the bathroom door into the kitchen, gasping for air. A knife was on the counter by the sink. He picked it up and walked back to the bathroom. By that time, she was sitting on the toilet relieving herself, her jeans and panties around her ankles. She looked up and said, “Go ahead, boy. You better get me while you can, because next time, I won’t let you get away.”

He gripped the knife tighter and stepped into the bathroom.

“They’ll send you to an adult prison,” she said. “The men there will make a woman out of you in a week. You’ll die in jail, and then you’ll go straight to hell.”

He’d backed away, knowing that one day he’d get another chance, a better chance. He’d kill her and do it without being caught. And then the relentless squeaking would be gone. The constant squeaking of bedsprings. He was forced to listen to that damned squeaking night after night, hour after hour. His knuckles turned white as his grip tightened on the steering wheel. Sweat ran down his forehead, and his breathing became labored.

Occasionally, he would hear his mother getting roughed up. She had come into his room in the morning many times with a shiner or swollen lips. He didn’t care. At some level, he wished one of them would kill her. At another, he wanted to do it himself.

She was a drunk. When she wasn’t screwing some john, she was wasted. As he grew older, he became more and more embarrassed. He had very few friends during his childhood and having anyone over to his house was out of the question. He never knew when his mom would tie one on. People had dropped by a couple of times, but he’d hidden to save himself the embarrassment of them seeing his mom passed out drunk, half-naked, slobbering on the couch.

A horn sounded behind him. He looked up and realized the light was green. How long had he been sitting there? “Damn it! Keep it together!” He eased the car into motion, joining the flow of traffic. The driver who’d blown his horn came speeding past with his middle finger extended. A nice, friendly gesture on a Sunday. He returned it in kind.

It didn’t take long for the thoughts of his mother to return. He’d had no real childhood, and he hated his mother for that. She’d finally done him a favor and given him the opportunity to do away with her when he was 16 years old. She should never have traded sex for that gun. Her “funeral” was a joke. They didn’t go to church and had no money, so a few of the other whores she hung around with and a couple of the men she’d banged threw a little party in her back yard before he was removed from the home by social services. The funeral was the same as her life. A sham and a waste of time.

He spent the last two years of adolescence being raised by his aunt, who didn’t really want him but took him in, he supposed, because she felt she had to. She was a decent woman, unlike her sister, but she had little time for him and made that abundantly clear on a regular basis. Something in him drove him to finish high school, though, and a guidance counselor at school helped him apply for government grants so he could go to college. He worked part-time jobs and managed to graduate in four years. He found a profession that would allow him to help others, and he was good at it. But he’d always known the rage that smoldered within him would find its way to the surface one day and boil over like a volcano. 

He smiled as he parked his car in his assigned space. His plans to make the world a better place had evolved over the years. Now he was cleaning up a couple of cities, one dead hooker at a time.