Shadows Never Lie

Roger Hornsby attempted to murder his overbearing mother with a healthy helping of strychnine in her evening tea as she watched Wheel of Fortune.  It was a simple plan, but just like most simple plans, complications quickly made it much more challenging.  In the end he made good on her murder, but not at all as he had planned it.   

Short of resources and opportunities, Roger was forced to share residence with Dolores, his mother.  It was a spacious house his late father, Lloyd, bought for his family after he returned from the war.  What had once been a majestic castle, had fallen into a state of sad disrepair.  Faulty electrical malfunctions that were potentially life threatening and  hazardous and leaky plumbing that flooded the bathroom every time you did not jiggle the handle properly, became the bane of the jewel of the neighborhood. 

Dolores refused to spend the money to repair the problems that seemed to multiply weekly.  What infuriated him the most was his mother had the financial means since his father had left her a generous pension when he unexpectedly passed away.  Roger was just in his sophomore year at Cornell when his father passed away. When he came home for his father’s funeral, he overheard his father's sister, Rhona gossip about her brother's suspicious demise.  

"As soon as Dolores found out about the size of his pension, well I could see the wheels turning in that crooked head of hers." She confided to another woman gathered at the house after the funeral service.  She did not know her nephew was within earshot, reading one of his college textbooks.  The other women all gasped when she revealed her suspicions.   

After his father's funeral, Roger found the bottle his father kept in his workshop he used to kill rats.  He looked at it closely, the skull and crossbones spelled out the danger of ingesting this poison. “Was this what she had used to do him in?” He pondered. 

Roger grew to loathe his mother who was going to be eighty on her next birthday.  She had lived as long as anyone had a right to, Roger reasoned.  Removing the cap on the poison, he made up his mind that her time had come. 

"Roger, bring me my morning medications."

"Roger, turn on the television."

"Roger, please feed the cats, would you?"

"Roger, could you get my favorite pillow for my feet?" 

To make matters worse, Dolores Hornsby was a devout cat lover whose brood had reached a total of seventeen. These loathsome creatures were everywhere. Naps on the bookshelves, scratching the furniture, and always causing mischief wherever they happened to be. He figured once he had done away with his mother, he would start in on them, one at a time.

Roger, however, was not a murderer.  The mere thought of death made him queasy.  He would literally get sick to his stomach at just the sight of blood on television. 

At Onondaga Bank, where he had worked as a cashier for the past twenty some years, he was forced to listen to the brainless chatter of Lindsay the pretty young woman who worked in the booth next to his.  She seldom had anything of real substance to say since her usual subject was about the Kardashians or some reality show he took absolutely no interested in.  The fact she was half his age earning the same wage, irritated him immensely.  

But murder?  Was he really capable of such a drastic step? 

"Mother, you tea." He brought in the tray. 

To make sure he went through with it, he had circled the date on his calendar to mark the event. Then one by one, the cats would likewise end.  After that, he would do in Lindsay just to prove he could.  She drank Diet Cokes, one after another. It would be a simple matter, he thought as an evil smile crossed his sallow face.

"Roger!" His mother called from the living room where she was watching the Wheel of Fortune.

"Yes mother." He rolled his eyes in disdain.

"Could you get me my shawl?  Mama is freezing."

"Coming mother." He sneered. He looked at the date circled on his desk calendar. 

"Soon." He thought to himself as he went to retrieve her shawl.     

As Roger was counting A stack of bills to record in his ledger, Lindsay was telling him all the details of some housewives reality television show she had seen the night before.  Due to her incessive conversation, Roger kept losing count of the money.  His rage grew as he tried to count the money, but could not concentrate with Lindsay's endless drivel.

When the two bank robbers burst in the bank waving their guns, Roger froze in place like a statue.  Lindsay paused for a moment before continuing her conversation.

"Empty your drawers!" One of the nylon stocking masked robbers demanded, pointing the gun at Lindsay.

"Keep your shirt on." She waved her hand at him as she opened her cash drawer.

"What if I decide to put a bullet in your pretty face?" The robber growled, shoving the weapon into her face. 

"Ah, do you think I'm pretty?  How nice." She smiled as she scooped the money from her drawer and put it into his bag.

"Now you, egghead." He pointed the pistol at Roger.  Swallowing hard, Roger did as he was told, but being called egghead did hurt his feelings a bit, but he would not disclose his hurt feelings to the armed bandit.

"Did anything exciting happen today?" His mother asked him at dinner.

"Naw." Roger answered.  He knew if he told her what happened, he would have to deal with all kinds of hysteria which he wished to avoid.

"Nothing ever happens there.  It's dull as dishwater." She shook her head. "When are you going to talk to someone about that promotion?"

This was A sore spot for Roger.  Becoming an assistant supervisor was something he wanted with all his heart, but it seemed to be as far away as Tibet and as about obtainable as the Hope Diamond.  Roger had never been known as a go-getter.  

Chad Vismount was the guy Roger felt was a sure bet for the promotion.  No, he would be regulated to listen to Lindsay for the rest of his career, his dead-end career while Chad would schmooze his way up the corporate ladder.  Hate and resentment encased Roger's life.  He wasn't sure he had enough strychnine to free himself of his endless woes.  

"Here you go mother." Roger handed her A cup of tea.

"Thank you, dear." She took it with shaking hands, but then she always spilled A few drops.  He had put enough in her tea to kill A horse. "This tea tastes funny."

"Drink it, mother." He said as firmly as he could.  

"I really don't care for this." She set it on the end table.

 "Now you want to complain?  For over ten years I have made your tea and you have never said A word." His voice was barely A snarling growl.

"Dear, I have never complained, because you have always made it just like the day before.  But this tastes off to me." She shook her head and grimaced.  He kept staring at the tea in her cup. "I can do without tea for one night."

He wanted to grab her face and pour it down her throat, but he sat there calmly as she watched her favorite show. 

"I feel sleepy." She yawned after the show was over. "I shall be off for some shut eye.  Good night, dear." 

He watched her shuffle off to her room wearing her fuzzy slippers and her warm robe, yawning as she did.  

"What should be done?" He wondered as he took her cup to the kitchen sink and poured it down the drain.  

All that kept going through his mind was once she was gone, the house would be his along with all the money she hoarded in her bank account.  Once in a while he would peek at her account when he was at work.  There were sure were a lot of zeroes.  Enough to keep him luxury, luxury he had never known. Letting the water run over the empty teacup, he began to have visions of different ways he could get rid of her.  

His hand touched her favorite butcher knife.  He thought about the root cellar she had maintained.  Down in the darkness was some soft soil that he would dig her grave in.  He would wait until he knew she was asleep and then he would sneak into her bedroom with the knife.  It would be over in a minute.  He would put the bloody bedsheets in the fireplace.  

He would commit the perfect murder.  No one would suspect a thing like that from him.  He would work out the legalities later.  He had all the time in the world once he had done it.    

"Roger." She stood at her bedroom door calling him. Startled, he nearly dropped the knife on the tile floor that he planned to replace. Instead the knife rattled in the sink, "What was that racket, Roger?"

"Nothing, mother." He hissed.

"Dear, can you get me a glass of water to take my medicine?" She asked.  He eyed the poison, but if she could taste it in her tea, she would surely taste it in her water.  Then his eyes caught the glimmer of the knife blade.  He would bring her A glass of water just before he sliced her throat with the sharp blade.

"Roger, are you bringing me some water?" 

"Yes mother." He put the knife beneath his bathrobe. He glanced at his shadow as he walked down the dimly lit hallway to her room.  His shadow appeared sinister to him.  He hoped she would not notice.

The knife blade felt cold, but it would all be worth it soon. She sat up in her bed with the nightlight on.  His shadow was elongated like some fiendish monster bent in strange angles against the flowery wallpaper he also had planned to replace.

"Thank you, dear." She reached for the glass.  Once she had it, he reached for the handle of the knife.  Before she could swallow her first gulp of water, he slashed her throat with the knife, but it was just A glancing blow that barely broke her skin. 

"Roger?" She was stunned at what he had just tried to do.  He cursed at his feeble attempt. "Such language!"

He buried the knife in her chest.  Her eyes were wide in horror, she tried to draw a breath, but was unable to as her mouth filled with her own blood.  Her eyes rolled to the back of her head as a fountain of blood saturated the white sheets.

It was at that moment Roger noticed his shadow looming over him like some wild savage monster.  He shuddered when he saw it thinking the shadow was another person in the room. 

"Shadows can't hurt me." He said as he noticed his own robe was soaked with her blood.

"Shadows never lie." The voice had A deep timbre to it.

"Shadows don't talk either." Roger felt his knees begin to shake.

"Then what you are hearing is just your imagination, right?"

"Right." Roger tried to convince himself as he dropped the bloody knife he removed from his mother's chest. He could not believe how much blood there was, she was frail and skinny.  But the blood kept coming.

Shadows never lie.  

Shadows are nothing more than a place where light can not penetrate.  

He wrapped her lifeless body in the blood soaked sheet.  When he went to remove her body, he was not able to move her as easily as he had thought. He was pretty sure she did not weigh one hundred pounds before he murdered her, but at this moment she felt as if she weighed over five hundred pounds.  He managed to slide her body off her bed.  Her body hit the floor with A sickening thud.  Blood splattered against the wall.  He would make sure to cover it with paint.  There was some paint in the root cellar. 

The phone rang. With his hands sticky with his mother's blood, when he tried to pick up the receiver, he dropped.  He could hear someone else's voice as the receiver hit the floor.

"Hello, Dolores?" The voice asked.

"No it's me, Roger." His heart was trying to beat its way out of his chest.

"What's going on?  This is Aunt Rhona." . 

"Just another quiet, nothing evening at the Hornsby home." Roger tried to laugh, but it sounded more like a painful groan.  He saw his mother's face.

"I will get you for this." His dead mother looked at him and  said with blood sticking to her teeth.  Roger let A low scream escape from his throat. Blinking, he saw that she was dead and had said nothing as his imagination was actually producing all of the special effects.

"Are you sure everything is alright?  You know I worry about you two." Her voice seemed to be probing A bit more than usual.  He knew Aunt Ruins was A busy body, but she had been that way all his life.

"Yes, we are fine.  Thanks for calling, auntie." He hung up the phone.  He had an ugly suspicion she would be over in the morning, checking up on them. 

He began to drag his mother's body down the hall, but the blood from her sheet was leaving A trail in the hall.  It was only A few more feet until the door to the cellar.  

Already, this was becoming a lot more than what he bargained for. If only she had drunk the tea, he would not have to clean up such a wretched mess.  His mother kept the house in pristine shape, but now her blood was everywhere.

He opened the door and managed to push her body down the stairs.  Like an out of control marionette, she flopped and claimed until she hit the cement floor with another sickening thud. He began to wretch until he vomited leaving a lake on the kitchen floor.

Some men can aspire to murder, but Roger was not one of them.  The best he seemed he was able to do, was to count other people's money. Anything beyond that was just too much for him. He had risen to the zenith of his ability.  Even his shadow had seemed to shrivel under the harsh glow of the fluorescent kitchen lighting.

Shadows never lie, they show us who we really are and the parameters of what is and isn't possible.

He did not want to descend into the dark root cellar where she lay, waiting for him to get rid of her remains, concealing his guilt once and for all.  

In the darkest corner of the cellar was the loose dirt he would bury her in.  A shallow grave would be adequate.  The shovel was in the corner.  He took the spade and shoved it into the loose dirt.  It took him an hour to get A three foot hole dug.  Enough to put her body in, he dragged her A few more feet, said A brief prayer over her remains before shoveling  the dirt over her until no trace of her could be seen anymore.

He would spend the rest of the night cleaning up any evidence of the brutal murder that had taken place.  

When the morning sun came screaming in the window, Roger was sitting in his easy chair waiting for sleep to overcome him in his total exhaustion.  Before drifting off, he vowed to never murder again.  This was not the kind of shadow he wanted to leave behind.

He hadn't been asleep for more than a few minutes when there was a knock at the door waking him from his peaceful slumber.

"Wait a minute." He sat up.  For a moment he had forgotten all about murdering his mother as he staggered toward the door.  Opening the door, Roger was nose to nose with two police officers.

"Good morning, sir, Officer Sunter and Davis." He nodded toward the shorter uniformed policeman, "We were wondering if we could ask you a few questions about last night."

With nothing to fear, Roger invited them inside.  Officer Sunter scanned the living room, but there was nothing even slightly suspicious.  He asked, "Would mind if Officer Davis has A look around?"

"Not at all." Roger smiled. "I suppose my Aunt Rhona called you."

"Rhona Tilligus?"

"Yes, that would be her." Roger was almost jovial.  He was free.  He had cut off his shackle and was feeling the exuberance of being unburdened.

"She said her older sister, Dolores-"

"My mother." Roger interrupted.

"Had told her that her son-"

"That would be me." He interrupted again much to the chagrin of the officer.

"That he...you were acting strangely.  So much so that she changed her will."  He read the note in his pad.

This shocked Roger that he began to stutter, "She...she...wha?"

"Boss, you'd better come in here." Officer Davis called from Roger's mother's bedroom.

Roger followed Officer Sunter down the hall.  When Roger saw what Davis was pointing to, his jaw fell open as if it had come unhinged.  Clearly seen on the floral wallpaper next to his mother's bed was a distinct shadow of the moment Roger had fatally stabbed his mother in the chest.

"A shadow never lies." He muttered in stunned shock as Officer Sunter put the cold steel handcuffs on Roger Hornsby.