Hillary_Tail of the Dog (33 page)

“Left of right?”

“Make a right then drive straight for about a mile. You’ll see an old country store. Turn left then and follow the long, winding road.”

“Sounds easy enough,” he said, happily. He couldn’t wait to drop her off and get out of there. He needed a cup of coffee and a cigarette, not to mention some more gas.

“We’re just minutes away,” Hillary said anxiously.

“You must really be excited to get there,” the driver noted.

“I’ve been planning for this day for a long, long time.”

“How long have you been away from home?”

“About a year, I guess, but it feels like ages.”

“There’s no place like home.”

“You can say that again!”

“Are they expecting you?”

Hillary laughed hard and long. She looked crazy.

She must be on drugs,
the driver thought.

“It’s going to be a surprise,” Hillary said at last, when she was able to contain herself.

“
Aww
, isn’t that nice,” the driver replied, and said nothing more. He made a left turn at the old country store and started down the long, winding road.

About halfway down, Hillary began rummaging through her shopping bag. The driver paid her no mind, figuring that she was getting her money ready.

Hillary settled on one of the shorter serrated knives. It would do the job, especially since the driver would not be expecting her attack. He was in for a surprise too! She smiled, feeling the giddiness that always preceded a kill. She had never done drugs, but she imagined that’s what it must have felt like to get high. Pure bliss…elation…satisfaction.

“You can pull over right up there,” Hillary said, pointing to a clearing in the wooded area.

“Here? In the middle of nowhere?”

“My house is just around the bend. I don’t want anyone to hear the car.”

A new surge of uneasiness nagged at the drivers instincts. Again, he dismissed it. She was just a girl, for God’s sake, what was the matter with him?

He pulled into the clearing. Leaving the car running, he craned his neck back and said, “Ninety—”

He choked and gagged on his remaining words as Hillary plunged the knife deep into his throat and dragged it across his neck, quickly and effectively severing his jugular.

“
Joog-you-ler
,” she said to the dying man, “that’s how it’s pronounced you know, not
jug-you-ler
like they say on TV...j
oog-you-ler.
..what a nice-sounding word....”

She pulled the knife free from his mutilated neck, careful not to get the dripping blood on her clothes. It was already all over her hand. She tossed the knife into the bag. Leaving the wide-eyed corpse in the driver’s seat, she climbed out of the car, shopping bag in hand. She placed the bag down and walked up to the driver’s door. She opened it, leaned over and turned off the ignition. She pulled out the key and clutched them in her hand. She opened the glove compartment and found some napkins from a fast food restaurant. She grabbed a handful of them and stepped out of the car, leaving the glove compartment open. She wiped the blood off her hands as best as possible. It left a deep burgundy smear between her fingers and on the back of her hand.
No matter,
she thought.
It’s not as if there won’t be more blood on my hands again soon....

She tossed the keys into her shopping bag and slammed the car door shut. Clutching the shopping bag in her right hand, she started walking down the road toward the house she used to call home. It was a happy moment for her. She was finally going home. She was going to see her mom again.

Content in all that she had accomplished so far and beaming with anticipation, she began humming Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” as she walked. She had planned for this moment so many times in her mind, it was hard to believe that the time had finally arrived. She missed her mother so, so much. There wasn’t a day that had gone by when she hadn’t thought about her. Her mother was going to be so surprised to see her, especially if what Dr. Morrison had told her was true and that people believed that she was dead. It was a good, good day! Christmas had come early.

Hillary was close enough now to see the house. There was one car in the driveway—her mother’s. She squealed in delight.

I’m almost home, Mom....

She walked up the steps and onto the porch. She reached for the doorknob, turned it, or at least tried to. It was locked.

Frowning, Hillary walked back down the steps and lifted a rock on the edge on the grass next to the azalea bush. Seeing the key underneath brought the smile back to her face. She grabbed it and bounded back up the steps.

With a quiet click, the door was unlocked.

Hillary stepped into the warm house. It still had the familiar smell of cinnamon and apples.

Hillary was home.

The house was quiet. Her mother was nowhere in sight. Leaving the noisy shopping bag in the foyer, Hillary quietly crept to the kitchen. Empty. Just as neat, tidy and sterile as always. She went to the living room, the formal dining room, the bathroom then the den. Empty.

Her anxiety level began to rise. What if her mother wasn’t home? She’d come all this way. She just
had
to be here. She’d had enough disappointments within the past couple of hours.

Hillary quietly ascended the stairs. Maybe her mother was in her bedroom.

As she drew closer, she could hear movement. She perked up. Her mother
was
home!

The bedroom door was open. Hillary peeked in. Her mother had her back to the door and was stripping the bedding off the bed, getting ready to start a load of laundry. Hillary waited at the doorway for her mother to turn around and see her.

After grabbing the pillow cases and stuffing them with the sheets and blanket into the laundry basket, the portly woman turned to leave her room.

Seeing Hillary grinning at the doorway, she jumped, dropped the laundry basket and screamed at the top of her lungs. She stood there, frozen in place, her high-pitched scream steady and loud until her voice cracked and her scream turned to sobs. Now she stood there shaking and crying.

Smiling, Hillary stared back at her mother, the woman with no ears. Did she know how loud she had been screaming?

“Hello, Mom...I’m home....”

Her mother’s hideously scarred face grew pale. She looked as though she was going to either throw up or pass out.

“Y-y-you’re dead,” she stammered nervously.

“Nope, alive and well. Don’t you look pretty?” she mocked.

“I can’t hear so well anymore,” her mother replied. She placed her hand over one of the unsightly remnants of what used to be an ear.

“Well, no matter, you never listened to me anyhow.”

Hillary took a step forward, her mother a step back. It continued this way a few steps more before her mother felt the bed on the back of her legs. There was nowhere left to go.

Hillary threw her arms around her mother and hugged her.

Her mother stood there, crying, shaking, hands at her side.

“Did you miss me?” Hillary shouted into the heavily scarred opening of her dismembered left ear.

Still shaking profusely, her mother nodded nervously.

“Aww, that’s so sweet,” she said loudly. “Let’s go downstairs and have some tea.”

Her mother shook her head.

“What’s wrong? C’mon, let’s go downstairs.”

Hillary held her mother’s hand and led her downstairs. The terrified woman didn’t dare resist. Hillary led her to one of the chairs at the breakfast nook.

“Sit,” she ordered, the threatening smile still planted on her face.

Her mother complied. She began to sob harder.

The smile left Hillary’s face. She grew angry.

“What are you crying for? Aren’t you glad I’m home?” she shouted.

Her mother nodded again nervously, this time, adding, “b-but you shouldn’t be here...”

“Why not?”

“Those people...all those people you...your father, your brother, your sister....”

Her mother broke down into hysterics, burying her face in her hands.

“What about them?” Hillary challenged.

“
You killed them
,” she shouted frantically, “
you murdered them!
”

Hillary laughed. It was a disturbingly menacing laugh that made her mother cringe all the more.

“
Why
, Hillary, why did you do all those awful things?”

Hillary became incensed. She took her mother’s wet face into her hands and lifted up her head so that she would look her in the eyes. Her mother’s enlarged tearful, frightened eyes stared back at her crazed daughter.

“
YOU NEVER HEARD ME, YOU NEVER LISTENED TO ME!
” Hillary shouted, a tear escaping her own venomous eye. “
YOU LET HIM HURT ME...
” her voice cracked, painful memories rushed to her mind.

Her mother stared on in silence.

“
DON’T YOU HAVE ANYTHING TO SAY?
” Hillary screamed, letting go of her mother’s face and hitting the side of her head hard with her closed-fisted hand.

Her mother’s head jerked to the left from the force of the blow. Still, she said nothing. She wept silently.

Hillary delivered punch after punch to her mother’s rapidly swelling and bruising face, alternating a left punch, then a right while chanting, “
I hate you Mom, I love you Mom, I hate you Mom, I love you Mom....
”

Hillary continued her vicious attack upon her mother until the woman’s face was barely recognizable, the bloodied, swollen flesh hot against her fractured cheekbones. She had sobbed through it all but did not put up a fight, nor did she beg for mercy. Perhaps she deserved this fate.

Hillary stepped back from her mother, still enraged.

“
Can you hear me?
” she spat, spittle flying from her mouth.

If the woman heard her, she gave no such indication. She sat there with her head slumped and moaning, waiting for the next blow.

Hillary turned and walked to the nearby butcher block. It wasn’t the same one she remembered. Then again, why would it be? She had used most of those knives and they were probably being held somewhere as evidence. She pulled out the one with the widest blade—the chef’s knife. It wasn’t serrated, but it would do nicely just the same. It was time to have some fun with her mother.

Hillary approached her mother slowly, the knife held high up within her fisted grip. When she got close enough to her mother, she plunged the knife into her upper arm at a forty-five degree angle so that the point would penetrate deep through the muscle, all the way to the bone. Her mother screamed out in pain but made no move to pull away. Her pained shrieking was mellifluous to Hillary, her mother’s final lullaby. It encouraged her to inflict even more pain. She pulled down on the knife, slicing deep into her mother’s arm. She stopped just above her elbow and pried the knife out. It make a suction-like pop as though it had been pulled from a thick muck.

Hillary dropped the knife on the floor beside her and stuck her thumbs into the bleeding, gaping wound. She dug in deep as her mother groaned in pain. Then, as if deboning a chicken, she forced open the oozing laceration, exposing the bone.

With both hands deep within the lesion, she ripped the woman’s tattered flesh, tugging on tendons and ligaments, throwing blood-soaked bits of her mother to the floor. Her mother’s agonizing wailing pleased her greatly, encouraging her to work faster. She continued shredding her mother’s arm until there was little more than a section of bone, arteries and veins between her upper arm and elbow.

Laughing maniacally, Hillary ran her blood-stained fingers over her mother’s tear-streaked face, painting her swollen, purple cheeks red.

“Are you having as much fun as I am?” Hillary leaned over and shouted into her mother’s “ear.”

“
P-p-pleaasseee,
” her mother sobbed, her body trembling so much, it looked almost like one of those bizarre tribal dances.

“What’s that? Please continue? No problem!”

Hillary picked up the knife and walked to the other side of her mother. She held her mother’s hand as she plunged the blade into her upper right arm, just as she had done with her left arm. The woman impulsively squeezed Hillary’s hand as a sharp, shrill cry escaped her bruised lips. Hillary ran the knife down, slicing into her right arm, just as she had to done to her left one. She dropped the knife and repeated the process of ravaging her mother’s flesh, tearing at it bit by bit with her fingernails until there was little left on the arm.

Her mother’s head lolled as she moaned piteously. Her eyes were closed. She didn’t dare look at her ravaged arms. She knew she couldn’t stomach seeing her mangled limbs. She just wanted to die, just as she had wanted to die the first time Hillary attacked her. Her mistake was begging Hillary to let her die...that’s why Hillary let her live. And every day since, she had relived the nightmare. Now, she had new horrors to face, new nightmares to endure for the rest of her miserable days. She knew Hillary wouldn’t let her die. She had already disfigured her once, now, limb by limb, she would be further disfigured.

It was difficult to think of Hillary as her daughter—the girl who had once worn golden pigtails and planted kisses on her cheek; the girl who always loved to give and receive hugs, always happy to cuddle; the girl who love to sing; the girl who always said “I love you.” No, this girl—this
monster
—was not her daughter anymore.

“I’m starving!” Hillary proclaimed excitedly. “Aren’t you?”

Her mother remained silent.

“I said,” Hillary repeated, loudly, “aren’t you hungry?”

Her mother nervously shook her head.

“Well I’m going to fix us a nice mother-daughter meal.”

Hillary began humming as she walked over to the kettle on the stove top. She filled it with water, set it upon the burner and turned on the range.

Hillary’s mother wanted to make a run for it, but she knew better. She had tried running last time and it only made Hillary angrier. What horrors did she have in store for her now?