Reader’s Choice selection from DMC’s flash fiction group, Friday Frights.
by Jeffrey Hollar:
I don’t care what them court-ordered psychiatric evaluations wanna say, I ain’t crazy man. If I was as bug-shit loony as these bastards think I am, do ya think I coulda carried out such a heinous act without nobody in the whole wide world able to prove it but me?
Naw, man, that’s bullshit and we both know it. I got nothin’ else better to do right now, so cop a squat and I’ll run the whole thing down for ya.
Sadie and me we’d been together, oh I guess about eight years or so. We wasn’t married or nothin’ but then that was kinda a mutual agreement on our part, see? She had a tight little ass, kept the place real tidy and was a fair hand in the kitchen. What’s more, every plug nickel she made at her waitressin’ gig she gave over ta me fer takin’ care of business with. So, don’t go thinkin’ it was any of that typical, lame-assed shit ya see on them crime TV shows what made me do her in. It ain’t never that simple man, it just ain’t.
Naw, I guess if there was any reason at all fer what I did it’d be her damned infernal finger tappin’. Yeah, ya heard me right, finger tappin’. Now, we all done it from time to time. Yer sittin’ in a doctor’s office or waitin’ on a train or what the hell ever and before ya know it ya find yerself rappin’ out a beat on whatever with yer damned fingernails. Now most of us, once we realize how freakin’ annoyin’ that is to every-damned-body around us, well we give it a rest. But Sadie? Oh hell, no. Bitch would just keep on rappin’ and tappin’ away till it just made ya wanna tear her freakin’ hands off the end of her boney-assed wrists just to get a little peace and quiet.
Dude, I’m serious. During the comin’ attractions thing at the movies….tap, tap, tap. Waitin’ fer our food to come at Rocco’s….tap, tap, tap. Any damned place and any damned time the bitch had to wait fer anything she’d be tappin’ away like it weren ‘t no big deal. Trust me, brothuh. Over the course of eight muthuhfuggin’ long years, it wears on ya.
If I had to say, the one thing put the nail in the bitch’s coffin, so ta speak, was when she started doin’ the shit in her sleep. Aw hell, now don’t go lookin’ at me like that! I am serious as a freakin’ heart attack. I dunno if it was excess energy or a muscle condition or just the result of so many damned years of it, but it started ta keep me up at nights. Imagine ya got a whole eight hours of quality sleepin’ time ahead of ya fer a change and ya wake up about o-freakin’-dark thirty to her plastic-assed nails doin’ a fandango on the damned oak nightstand.
I mean ya try to be cool and blow it off but ya can only take so much of losin’ yer beauty sleep before ya go apeshit and do somethin’ about it, right?
I don’t guess I even realized I had the pillow over her face and was bearin’ down on it at first. Wasn’t like she was flailin’ or thrashin’ away. Naw, she pretty much just laid there, them fingers tappin’ and tappin’ and tappin’ until what snapped me around was when the tappin’ quit. That was when I knew I’d fucked up and there was gonna be hell ta pay tryin’ to explain the shit.
So I drug her ass down ta the basement and got ta work. She wasn’t never no big-assed chick, so didn’t take but a lick to hacksaw her ass down into manageable-size pieces. Basement had an old storage room and I had me ‘bout five bags of cement left over from a job I helped a buddy do, so ya can see where this was headin’ right? Inside of an hour, bitch was under a good solid foot of cement and wasn’t no way she was gonna tap her way outta that. We owned the damned house so not like nobody was just gonna come strollin’ in and notice the addition in the basement right? Wrong, dude, so very, very freakin’ wrong.
Turns out Sadie’s boss was a real tightass about her missin’ work. Such a tightass she hadn’t missed a day in like forever. Like I paid any freakin’ attention to that shit? Anyway, he makes some calls to his brother-in-law in blue and, long story short I get three of New York’s finest bangin’ on my door to “check on the welfare” of Sadie.
Well, there I am tryin’ ta feed the flatfoots a line ‘bout how I ain’t seen her and how she was talkin’ ‘bout visitin’ some friends upstate when I starts hearin’ the damned tappin’. First off, figgered I was just imaginin’ the shit. Guilty conscious and all y’know? But as they just keep standin’ there yammerin’ on and questionin’ away, the shit just keeps getting’ louder and louder and louder and louder and…well, ya get the point, eh?
Anyways I finally went ballistic and told the sumbitches if they wanted Sadie so damned bad, they could just go down ta the freakin’ basement and get her themselves. Told ‘em they was welcome to her if they’d just get her ta stop the damned tappin’.
Anyways, that’s what wound me up in this shithole of a place. How about you?
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