Billy half skipped, half hopped into the colorful sun brightened modern kitchen where his mother, Alicia Johnson, was kneading the floppy white dough into a pie pan. The fresh peaches, quartered and lying in their own juice were awaiting their untimely demise into the soon to be baked pie shell.
“Hi mom,” exuberantly shouted the dark haired three foot high Billy, “when’s lunch?”
“Not for another forty five minutes Billy. You have just enough time to finish cleaning your room.”
“Aw mom, Sammy wanted me to play catch outside with his new softball.”
“You won’t be able to go outside today and I don’t think Sammy will be able to either.”
“Why not mom? That doesn’t sound fair?” whined Billy.
“There was a report on the news that a bad man escaped from the jail and the man on television said for everyone to stay inside with your doors locked till he was caught.”
“What about dad, he’s outside, will the bad man hurt him?”
“I don’t think so, your dad is in a big office building with a lot of other people and he always rides in a car pool so I think he is very safe.” God I hope so she thought, this guy is a homicidal maniac and he has killed three people since he got loose by hacking them up with a machete he found in the car he stole when he escaped. Luckily that only happens to other people.
“Okay Billy, hurry up. I told you I wanted that room done before your father comes home tonight and I don’t want any more excuses.”
“Alright,” Billy shrugged as he dragged toward the stairs, “but can I play my video games after lunch?”
“As long as you do a good job.” Alicia smiled remembering what a time her mother used to have getting her own kids to clean up their rooms.
“A spill of glossy black hair was idly pushed away from her left eye with a flour encrusted finger as she daydreamed of her long ago childhood. At thirty six her maturity had emphasized the beauty that had come to her in her early teens. A pimply flat-chested adolescence had almost overnight blossomed into a gracefully curved well formed young woman. She didn’t have the fine chiseled features of the born beautiful rich. The thinness of lips and delicate lines of the cultured class but, the did have an alluring almost mystical smile that could lighten up a conversation with just a subtle hint of the vitality locked within.
Billy himself, was spared the embarrassing plumpness of childhood and at six years old was already admired by his parent’s friends and his teacher as a handsome young man.
Alicia finished the final touches on the peach pie and placed it in the pre-heated oven, humming softly a tune she had heard on a commercial the night before.
She washed her hands and picked up her watering pot and pushed open the glass sliding door and walked into her favorite room in the three year old house. Hanging ferns, several varieties of philodendrons, a very large dieffenbachia, and about twenty seven other varieties of indoor plants beamed at her from her screened in sun room. She spent several hours each day amid the wet coolness of this add-on room. Picking browning leaves, caressing dark green stalks and singing soft melodies to her “jungle” as her husband Bill called it, relaxed her immensely each day.
“Well,” she murmured to her plants, “I only have time to water you now. I’ve got to make Billy’s lunch but, I will be back this afternoon.” She didn’t feel embarrassed or even silly talking to her foliage collection. Lots of people talk to their plants she had told herself numerous times. It probably helps them grow. Alicia added the final water to her plants and briskly stepped back into the kitchen. Walking directly to the refrigerator after placing the watering can on the sink she paused and thought, oh well sandwiches again. That’s all Billy seems to like.
Opening the refrigerator door with her left hand she reached into the coldness without even glancing down, she knew from repeated daily habit just where on the shelf Billy’s favorite lunch was. Her right hand enclosed around the appointed place the grape jelly always set and she grasped a sticky round warmness.
“What the heck,” she exclaimed and glanced downward and stared at the freshly severed arm of her young son. Mrs. Johnson screamed and screamed and screamed. She was still screaming very late into the night.