Jaws on the Floor.

I wanted nothing more out of his flabby tummy than to retrieve the lion’s portion of my green club sandwich. Nothing more, check; but nothing less either. That and for the incessant bullying the school yard had suffered at the hands of The Gang of Three to stop. The Terrible Trio had swept across the school yard like a swarm of locusts, picking harvests out of takeout containers with victuals prepared for stepchildren and grandkids. Picking clean the lunchboxes of the small and weak of this world. Topsy-turvying the chow of those who dared resist. It should go without saying that you suffered a much worse fate if you brought nothing at all. A bloody face for being perceived a Smart Aleck. A grazed knee for looking at one of them terrorists funny. Even a broken nose, and why? Well, just for the heck of it it turns out. The teachers . . . Well, they knew all about these shenanigans but looked the other way. Parents caught up, and began to pre-emptively pack a portion specifically for these thugs; this was such a school that if you got your child in, it meant you couldn't afford to get them out.

Up until one windy morning.

I don’t know who made the Kilimanjaroan mistake; my stepmother for preparing my favourite meal/snack, myself for taking the food to school or Tino for following through with his usual terrorist agenda. But at some point during his daily heist, the circuit in my brain shorted. And I said no.

Three planes took off that very second, headed straight for my twin towers of defiance and resoluteness. One after another the self-imposed judge, jury and executioner said to repeat myself.

I did.

And immediately, feet descended on my helpless body.

They must have broken a bone each because that was the totality of my fractures. Then they fled into the long, welcoming arms of an unjust law of the jungle which had hitherto always embraced them without fail.

___

“Aunt, it’s movie night and a good one’s on in ten minutes.”

“I know. But tonight you gonna have to enjoy it alone my young kittens.”

“What, you ain't joining us?”

I shake my head, nay.

“But we made popcorn.”

“Nope, you caramelized it.”

“Sorry Aunt,” says the boy half of the pair, “Is that why you won’t join us?"

No dear, truth is I loathe them bloody animations. That’s why. Gimme a mystery. Gimme a thriller. Or a downright horror show. A girl being chased around by a gang of rednecks bearing chainsaws. Gimme that. Or better yet, some dude trying in vain to defend his cabin as zombies roam the woodlands, ears peeled for the faintest sound. His wife is meanwhile attempting to hush a babe that wants to explode. Kill that thing already, woman. Smother it. I like the sight of buildings falling on cars, powdering skulls and squeezing marrow out of bone? Screams. Children running around with missing limbs. Jumping over bridges. More screaming. Delicious screaming. Or vampires and werewolves on the rampage, breaking into forts and through barricades. And Mr. Director, for goodness sake please turn up the volume of the yummy screaming and scrumptious screeching for help and make it never arrive on time if at all. Splash puke-inducing gore across the screen. And, behold and lo ma'am barrister, you’ve just made my bloody cup of tea.

“Come join us please, it won’t be much fun without your cuddles,” says Christian.

“Yes, Auntie,” says his twin sister, “remember what you always tell us, ‘The more the merrier.’”

It’s usually the cute little birds perched deep inside the nests of their eye-sockets that eventually win any debate. When the twins beg or entreat, their eyes become rounder and larger. That’s their secret ingredient. They draw you into their brown petals, like a bee addicted to nectar. Begging you to join a small circle of trust and friendship circumscribed by a pinkie inside the innocent mind of an eight year old.

I used to have a cat like that—Billy—with similar abilities to thaw the iceberg thumping in my chest. Using the exact same facial enchantments.

“Okay, let me finish up with a few things upstairs and I’ll come back to watch TV and eat charcoal-flavored popcorn with you guys.”

They jump from the top of the couch and straight to cloud nine. “Yippee.”

“Until your dad comes home maybe?"

“No Aunt, until the movie ends.”

"Dad won't watch anything with us."

“Okay then. I’ll be back. But don’t leave your spots.”

“It starts in six minutes Aunt. So hurry up.”

___

I wanted nothing more out of his flabby tummy than to retrieve the lion’s portion of my green club sandwich. That’s the school of thought my throbbing mind enrolled in as my body healed from its fractures and lacerations. A mind throbbing at the careless insistence of a multitude of ghosts. I endured their taunts, mockery and bottomless pit sarcasm.

“So you just gonna let it go? Take the so-called higher road? And why? Let me guess, that’s what Jesus would do, correct?” said one of the many bat-shaped-but-human-faced ghouls hanging from the ceiling of the hospital room in which I was incarcerated for six weeks. His words ricocheted from the four corners of the room before finding some bitter spot in my soul and gaining resonance. “They just gonna walk away from it all, unscathed, while you forevermore walk with a limp?”

I still felt like a martyr and wasn’t going to let my new ego be deflated by some low IQ apparition. Some kids and even their parents had just visited to thank me in person for standing up for myself and by extension the other kids.

“They’ve all been expelled from school,” they told me. I parroted the same to my accuser.

The phantom almost fell off the chandelier, laughing his guts out. “Oh my God,” he cried, “I almost cracked a rib laughing . . . Sorry, that was in no way a reference to yours, you know, the missing one.”

It wasn’t missing. It was only broken. But just thinking about it made me seethe.

“What would you do if you were me?” I said.

He floated from ceiling to window, then from window to a bottom corner of my bed. “When you disrespected them by your defiance they didn’t wait for the school board to sit and yap about how to restore what’d been lost.”

“They took it upon themselves to ___.”

He jumped with joy. “Exactly!”

“They knew what they wanted and how to get it,” I said.

“Exactly.” Silence. “So the question in front of you is do you want to reclaim your lost dignity too or be some girl who did good by being walloped, and for what? the greater good?”

Of course I wanted my dignity back, but not only that. After all, my dignity wasn’t the only thing they took from me that morning, was it? They also took and ate my green club sandwich.

And Tino partook the lion’s share of it.

___

The drapes dance like drunken apparitions to the high pitched singing of the wind. When the wind sings in the mornings, it brings marvellous scents to the nostrils. Like that of salt from the sea, mulch from the forest and daisies from the plains. It sings in tune with the birds; songs of hope, renewal and reassurance.

In the evenings the wind sings again. The birds join in again; yet this time, the silhouettes of these creatures flap their wings against the backdrop of the blood gushing from a wounded sky. The same songs which are joyous in the mornings are sombre in the evenings, for in the latter they prophesy about the dark scab that will eventually cover the bloody horizon of the injured monstrosity. More so when the night is the eve before Halloween. The songs sow goosebumps on the skins of all but naïve lovers who still stare in awe at this ostensible beauty.

The drapes dance.

I peer outside as I close the windows. To stop this haphazard dancing. Perhaps also to stop my unease. An unease which threatens to aggravate the rib which at least one third of the Terrible Trio once broke. One last look at the uninviting darkness. One last . . . My gaze lands on the spot where I knew I’d find it. The figure paces about under the scant light provided by a flicking incandescent lamp. In one hand he holds a small red light which is periodically lifted towards the mouth. In the other hand he carries . . . a shotgun. This weapon—at the ready disposal of this particular man—is what gives me the jitters on the eve of this Halloween.

I bang the window against the frame.

His gaze shifts toward my position.

I close the curtains before it fixes me in my spot like a deer in headlights. I land on the bed to catch my breath for a while. I can be careless. Reckless even. So I end up dislodging a couple of bones from the human-sized skeleton lying on the edge of my bed. A humerus, a femur and a few toes clank on the porcelain floor. As simultaneously as Christian bursts into the room.

“Aunt, the movie’s just . . . the . . . movie’s . . . started.”

“What did I say about entering people’s rooms without knocking?”

“I’m sorry . . . I’m ___.”

“Well, too late for that.”

“Is that real?” says Christina who enters as simultaneously as her brother’s turning to make the run for it.

“Well, I’ll sooner tell you what it isn’t: any of your goddam business!”

____

The wheels of his bicycle continued to turn as I dug into the son-of-a-bitch. A dog barked, then growled, then saw itself off, tail tucked between its hind legs. A girl screamed as I excavated. Then a boy as the knife plunged deeper and deeper. Then an entire choir of innocent souls. The wind blew leaves and litter around. Blood volcanoed out of his belly, chest and mouth as I knifed my way into his flabby belly. Blood. Tissue. Then food partly and food completely digested, it oozed out of his abdomen. Including a viscous juice the color of my sandwich, though it turned out to smell and taste worse than yuck. I hadn't found it yet. So I dug . . . and the knife dug. He screamed. So did I. Him out of pain and desperation, me out of boiling rage. He twisted and writhed. His skull cracked when I shoved it back to the kerb. Mind spilled over matter. He tossed. He breathed one last time.

But I dug on. Like a miner intent on exhuming the gem revealed to him in a vision.

Seeking nothing more—but also nothing less—out of this flabby tummy than my beloved green club sandwich.

___

Moral dilemma of the night: when do you slaughter them kids? Before or after their parent’s arrival? Does he find them on the floor, soaked in their own blood, lifeless? Or does he bulldoze his haughty self through that door only to discover them still bound together in a bundle as they are presently? Facing opposite directions. Gagged. Weeping. Shivering. There are pros and cons to either positions.

The pros of killing my nemesis' offspring right now are as follows: I'll make it quick and painless for the little ones; observing his sudden shock when he discovers what has transpired will be priceless; and, once the deed is done, there's no risk of changing my mind as the night wears on.

The cons: I won't relish teasing him with the threat of Christian and Christina's demise.

In juvenile, I made a friend who explained why she tortured her victims with lengthy monologues before she slit their throats.

"There's nothing more satisfying than looking at the terror in their eyes while they anticipate impending doom. I could do it quick, but I wouldn't orgasm."

That would eventually become her undoing. Her last would-be victim escaped before she carried out her intention.

But here I am, considering that futile strategy as an option. Christina mumbles something, Christian fidgets. But duct tape restricts the furtherance of either endeavours.

The ghost appears, the one which has the face of a person and the body of a bat. He looks at the skeleton which stands upright, hooked to a slightly dancing chandelier by two lengths of twine. There's red insulation tape on a finger, a hip and a rib.

His attention turns to the poor kids. Shakes his head in disgust. "Even Lucifer himself wouldn't conceive of something so dreadful."

"That's why he's not me."

He scans the room, gives me one last rueful look and floats away.

That's how you exorcize them demons.

When he enters, his jaw is instantly on the floor. My dagger is on Christina's throat, warning the father to cease and desist.

"Don't, or you'll pay dearly."

"As much as I'd love to see that, what I'd love to see more is for you to sit your ass down and do exactly as I say."

He sits his behind on the cold porcelain. He shivers. Looks at me. I think it dawns on him then. His jaw falls on the floor.

"Yes, I'm the girl whose sandwich you ate at school."

"I knew it from day one!"

No you didn't. A few years ago they released me from jail on account of my "good behavior." They gave me a new identity and another shot at life. I became a nanny. He became my target as soon as his wife died. Let's not talk about how that happened, at least not right now. Needless to say he was the main suspect. Poor guy. I became his crutch. His kids grew fond of me. Now here we are.

"You killed Tino for the sandwich," he says.

"He didn't eat it alone."

"Danny's still breathing. Why me and not him?"

"Why your kids? should be the question. And Danny's a useless drug fiend sleeping under a bridge. I think Karma got it right with that one."

"I sense a bit of envy there. You ruined your life when you killed Tino. Somehow you got out. Found out that your life is miserable because you made it so. Now you wanna take it out on me?"

"On the kids. My twisted mind calls it fair. You step on my toe today, I wait until you've an Olympic qualifier tomorrow before I step on yours. That's what's happening here."

You're not gonna kill a man's innocent offspring for a mere sandwich, are you? the voice says from the shadows.

Yes I am, I reassure myself. But I'm swearing profusely. I can't be serious. I can't be doing this? How did I become a monster when all I was trying to do initially was rid the world of them. A life can't be worth the contents of a lunch tin. But that ship has already sailed, hasn't it? Which path do I take now.

The door opens.

When I come to, I'm on the floor, staring at a blurry world. But through the haze I can distinguish four figures. Two belong to the twins. One belongs to their father. The last one is the same I saw standing at a distance and smoking when I peered out earlier. The security guard. My gut told me he'd be trouble. He son of a gun came though for his master and shot me. Oh, there's a fifth figure: the skeleton. Still swinging on the chandelier. Sixth figure: the ghost. Grinning from what-looks-like-ear to what-looks-like-ear. From what I can make out, the guard and the dad are arguing about the legality and ethics of finishing me off with a second bullet to the head. The guard insists the police should take it from here. I want to tell them to go ahead but my mouth won't open. Fire pours out of my cheek. When I turn my head slightly to the left I see why: he shot my jaw off my face and there it lies, on the floor.

"Christian, go grab my pistol. You know where to find it, don’t you?"

"Yes, dad."

"Good. Hurry up. I'll finish her myself."

Darkness returns. The flashes which momentarily chase this darkness are pieces of my life. What I did. What I should have done. Kill them kids? No. I did right not going through with that. Tino. Deserved it. And this dude who's kicking my legs and calling me a bitch? Karma has a way of ___.

A shot rings in the air. It almost paralyzes my audio senses.

"Why did you do that Christian?" says Christina.

I open my eyes. The boy's holding a smoking gun. His father's on the floor. Smiling. No. Bleeding. From the back of his head.

"He ate Aunt's sandwich," says the boy.

I don't know if I want to smile or scowl, but my jaw's still on the bloody floor!