We Always Called Him Snap
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

(This short story has been published in The Literary Hatchet.)

Mrs. Arlene Oberhausen was a young-looking widow, fifty-seven years old. She lived in a comfortable, twelve-room house without a mortgage on a tree-lined boulevard in a small city. She lived well, without extravagance, employed a gardener and part-time kitchen help, bought new drapes for the dining room every two years. All her family was dead except for her son, Stanislaus Oberhausen, who went by the nickname of Snap. He was thirty years old and had always lived with Mrs. Oberhausen in her comfortable, twelve-room house without a mortgage on a tree-lined boulevard. He never planned on living anywhere else.

At times Mrs. Oberhausen was dismayed by Snap’s lack of ambition. While other thirty-year-old men had careers, families and homes of their own, Snap seemed uninterested in those things. He was content to eat, sleep, lie around in his underwear, read comic books and watch TV. In recent years he had put on an alarming amount of weight. He rarely bathed, combed his hair, or bothered to get dressed. He hardly left the house and sometimes when he did leave the house, he was gone for two days at a time without any explanation, as if he had been captured by aliens in a flying saucer and then had no recollection of the experience.

Mrs. Oberhausen believed that Snap just hadn’t found his way yet. He was strangely uninspired by life but, given time, he would discover his God-given talents (whatever they were) and take his place in the world along with every other successful person who ever lived. He was the rose that doesn’t bloom until August.

If he wanted to be a prizefighter, a ballet dancer, an auto mechanic or a horticulturist, she would finance his education and do whatever it might take to get him to put his foot on the bottom rung of the ladder and begin the ascent. She would be patient and give him as much time and space as he needed. She wouldn’t be like her own mother who drove her own children away, a fishwife if there ever was one.

On a Friday afternoon in April, everything changed. Some men came and took Snap away.

It began like any other day. Snap came down in his bathrobe at ten in the morning and ate his usual breakfast of half-a-dozen eggs, half-a-pound of bacon, and family-sized bottle of Dr. Pepper. He ate without looking up or speaking and when he was finished he went back upstairs to his room. Mrs. Oberhausen knew she wouldn’t see him again until lunchtime.

She was in the kitchen washing the dishes when she heard a knock on the door. When she went to the door and opened it, she saw an older man with gray hair and a younger man with no hair at all. They both wore dark suits and were officially grim as if they were acting in a television drama.

“Yes?” she said, shading her eyes with her hand.

“Is this the home of Mr. Stanislaus Oberhausen?” the younger man with no hair said.

“We always called him Snap,” she said. “Ever since he was a baby.”

“Is Mr. Oberhausen at home?”

When she seemed to hesitate, he opened his wallet and flashed a badge in her face. “We need to see him, ma’am,” he said. “It’s important.”

“All right. If you’ll wait here, I’ll go and see if he’s awake.”

She went up the stairs and leaned her ear against the door of Snap’s room and tapped lightly. “Are you there, dear?” she asked.

“Yes?” came Snap’s faraway voice.

“There are two men at the door who say they want to see you.”

“What do they want?”

“I don’t know.”

“Find out who it is and tell them I’ll call them back.”

“It’s not the phone, dear!” she said. “They’re here. At the door.”

She heard him walking toward the door and undoing the lock. When he opened the door, he was pulling his bathrobe around his middle and tying it. She was going to try to warn him about the men at the door, but he went past her without giving her a chance to speak.

He went down the stairs in his bare feet and when he turned the corner at the bottom of the steps and saw the two men standing at the door, he turned around and ran back up the stairs liked a scared rabbit.

The older man with gray hair and the younger one with no hair at all came running into the house and up the stairs after Snap. The older man with gray hair called to somebody outside and two uniformed men came rushing in and they also ran up the stairs. The four of them, slightly out of breath, positioned themselves outside the door of Snap’s room. The older man with gray hair tried the knob and knocked.

“It’s the police, Mr. Oberhausen,” he said. “We need to talk to you.”

“No!” Snap’s muffled voice said. “I don’t want to talk to you! Go away!”

“For heaven’s sake!” Mrs. Oberhausen said. “What is this all about, anyway?”

“Is there a window in that room?” the younger man with no hair at all asked.

“Why, yes,” she said. “There are two.”

“Would he try to escape?”

“Escape? Why would he do that?”

The older man with gray hair gestured to one of the two uniformed men to force the door open. The uniformed man promptly applied his shoulder to the door with considerable force. On the third thrust, the door frame splintered and the door opened.

When the four of them ran into Snap’s room, with Mrs. Oberhausen behind them, Snap was trying to hide himself in the closet. He whimpered and attempted to conceal himself behind some hanging clothes. The two uniformed men seized him by the arms and began trying to extricate him.

“Leave me alone!” Snap screamed. “I haven’t done anything! There’s been some mistake!”

“I demand to know what this is all about!” Mrs. Oberhausen said. “You don’t just barge into people’s houses this way and…”

They freed Snap from the closet and when they let go of his arms he threw himself on the bed, bellowing like a bull.

“Make it easy on yourself, son,” the older man with gray hair said.

“Don’t let them do this to me, mother!” Snap screamed.

When they tried to pull Snap off the bed, the sheets came off in his fists. He tried holding onto the mattress with his arms and legs. His bathrobe rode up onto his shoulders. His underpants came partway down, exposing his enormous white buttocks.

The older man with gray hair turned to Mrs. Oberhausen and said, “I think you’d better wait downstairs, ma’am. We’ll stay with him and get some clothes on him.”

“Is there something I should do? Somebody I should call?”

“No, ma’am. Just go back downstairs for now.”

Clenching a handkerchief in both hands, Mrs. Oberhausen waited at the bottom of the stairs. She listened to the muffled voices coming from upstairs, including a couple of sharp exclamations from Snap indicating he was being hurt in some way. After five anxious minutes, the older man with gray hair and the younger man with no hair at all came down the stairs, leading Snap between them by his elbows.

The first thing Mrs. Oberhausen saw was that Snap’s hands were cuffed in front of him. She was going to protest, but when she saw his tearful face and the grim, subdued manner of the older man with gray hair and the younger man with no hair at all, she decided it was probably best to say nothing at the moment. If they had to “take him in” (in TV parlance), the whole thing would be cleared up in minutes and he would be released, she was sure of it.

The older man with gray hair and the younger man with no hair at all stood aside and let the two uniformed men take Snap out the door, while they remained behind to have a word with Mrs. Oberhausen.

“Where are you taking him?” she asked. “What do I do now?”

“You don’t need to do anything, ma’am,” the younger man with no hair at all said.

“Do I need to engage a lawyer?”

“Not at the moment, ma’am. You’ll be notified.”

“When? How long is this going to take?”

“Try not to worry, ma’am. The wheels of justice turn slowly at times.”

“How can I not worry? You come into my house and take away my son and I don’t even know the reason!”

“I know, ma’am. These things are always hard for the parents.”

“What things? What do you think my son did?”

“The only advice we can give you now, ma’am, is maintain a positive attitude and don’t speak to reporters.”

“Speak to reporters about what?”

“Somebody will be calling you and all your questions will be answered.”

“When? When will that be?”

“Soon. It’ll be soon. Just live your life and do everything you would ordinarily do.”

“Yes, but…”

“You have a really fine day now.”

After the men left, Mrs. Oberhausen fixed herself a pitcher of martinis. She wasn’t used to drinking alcohol, especially in the middle of the day, but she needed something to calm her down. After she had drunk more than half the pitcher, she fell into an uneasy sleep on the couch (telephone in reach) and was surprised when she woke up and saw it was seven o’clock and nearly dark out.

She got up and turned on all the lights. Had the phone rung while she was sleeping? Wouldn’t she have heard? She went to the front door and walked out onto the porch and looked up and down the street. What she was looking for? Just a sign that Snap was all right and would be coming home soon. He’d have lots to tell her, they’d have a good laugh, and she’d cook him a steak.

She sat up until after midnight, waiting for the phone to ring, but it didn’t ring a single ring. When she finally went to bed, the phone by her side, she wasn’t able to sleep most of the night. She imagined that Snap was downstairs without his key and was trying to get her attention by throwing stones at her window. Finally she got up and, pillow and blanket in hand, went downstairs and slept the rest of the night on the couch, where she managed, after daybreak, to fall into the oblivion she desired.

At nine o’clock, Betty Ann, the part-time maid, came in, letting herself in by the back door. When Mrs. Oberhausen heard Betty Ann in the kitchen, she thought it might be Snap come home but, of course, it wasn’t.

She was going to tell Betty Ann about the men horrible coming and taking her Snap away, thinking it might relieve some of her inner tension to talk about the matter, but she knew that Betty Ann was a notorious gossip and it was best not to give her fodder for the rumor mill just yet.

“I got the grocery list all made out to if you want to add anything before I go,” Betty Ann said.

“No, you stay here and answer the phone,” Mrs. Oberhausen said. “I’ll go to the store myself. There are a few things I need. Personal things.”

“All right, ma’am.”

“If anybody calls me for, write down everything they say and tell them I’ll call them back as soon as I come home.”

“All right, ma’am. Is your son in his room?”

“No. He, uh, he’s out with some friends.”

“I’ll do the upstairs vacuuming, then.”

“No, don’t do it just yet if it keeps you from answering the phone.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Mrs. Oberhausen felt better, somehow, at being outside the confines of her own home, behind the wheel of her car, seeing other people. She forgot the grocery list but it didn’t matter. With a fixed smile, she loaded up her cart with bread, meat, fresh fruit, vegetables, beer, wine, vermouth and vodka. (She had a book somewhere with recipes for mixed drinks.) Before she left the store, she remembered to buy several cans of pie cherries. Cherry pie was Snap’s favorite dessert and she would be sure and bake a big one for him for his homecoming.

Before going home, she drove out of her way by three or four miles to go by the police station. She was going to stop the car and go in and demand to at least see Snap and know that he was all right, but she remembered what the younger man with no hair at all had said about wheels of justice turning slowly. It had only been one day.

When she got back home, Betty Ann was cleaning out the refrigerator. She was certain the expected call would have come through while she was out but, as Betty Ann said, nobody called.

That night she wasn’t able to sleep at all. At three a.m. she remembered some narcotic sleeping pills she had from two or three years earlier that she didn’t like to take because of their aftereffects. She dug the bottle out of her dresser drawer and swallowed a couple of the old pills with a glass of wine. She slept heavily after that, without any disturbing dreams, and in the morning she awoke with a headache and a sinking heart.

After a light breakfast, she was certain the call about Snap would come through that day and the whole matter would be easily and quickly resolved. The friendly voice on the phone would tell her she could come and pick Snap up at her earliest convenience. The sun would be shining and it would be a happy occasion.

It rained all day, though. Betty Ann came in at nine in the morning. After the upstairs vacuuming, Mrs. Oberhausen paid her for the rest of the day and told her she could leave and wouldn’t be needed again for at least a week. After that, Mrs. Oberhausen drank and dozed for the rest of the day on the couch in front of the TV with the sound turned down so low she couldn’t hear it. The phone never rang; a couple of times she picked up the receiver to make sure it was still working.

Wide awake at midnight, she again took two of the sleeping pills with a glass of wine. Two hours later, still awake, she took two more.

By the fourth day, there was still no word about Snap. Mrs. Oberhausen, in an attempt to avoid another miserable day waiting for the phone to ring, set about giving Snap’s room a good cleaning.

She opened the windows to let in some fresh air. Then she cleared out all the trash and debris: old newspapers and magazines, food cartons, candy wrappers, soda and beer bottles, dirty clothes, socks and underwear. She loaded everything into trash cans, including the clothes, and put the cans at the curb for trash pickup.

With the room free of clutter, she cleaned the walls and floors, clearing away the cobwebs; pulled the furniture away from the walls and sucked up all the dust mice into the vacuum cleaner; scrubbed the mysterious stains out of the rug that had formed over the years; cleaned and polished the bedstead, dresser and chest of drawers; emptied all the drawers into trash bags; replaced the old pillows and sheets on the bed with new ones that had never been used; scoured and disinfected the bathroom, cleaning all the mirrors and polishing the chrome fixtures. From the closet she took all of Snap’s old clothes and threw them away. From the drawers, she took his socks and underwear—all old things, not to be used anymore. When he came home, they’d go shopping and buy everything new, wipe the slate clean and begin all over again.

An indeterminate number of days went by, cruel and unchanging. The phone didn’t ring and Snap didn’t come home. Mrs. Oberhausen drank and took pills, eating practically nothing. Feeling not quite dissipated enough, she resumed her old habit of smoking. She had periods where she couldn’t remember anything. Whole blocks of time were lost. At times she imagined Snap was there, in the house, and then she knew he wasn’t there at all. Nobody was in the house. She was hardly there herself.

She was dozing on the couch in the middle of the afternoon when she heard faraway voices and a knock at the door. When the knock persisted, she realized it was not coming from the TV as she first thought. She stumbled to the door, rearranging her clothing, and when she opened it she saw a slender young man standing on the doorstep. Familiar somehow but not familiar.

“Yes?” she said.

“Hello, mother,” the young man said in Snap’s voice.

“What?”

“You were a long time answering the door.”

“I-I guess I must have fallen asleep.”

“In the middle of the day?”

“I haven’t been sleeping well at night.”

“Aren’t you going to let me in?”

She opened the door and stood aside to let him come in, even though she wasn’t quite sure who he was. He was carrying a suitcase and wearing a red shirt and black pants, clothes she had never seen before. His brown hair had been cut and was neatly combed. Snap but not Snap.

He took a few steps into the room, took off his dark glasses, set his suitcase on the floor. “It’s good to be home,” he said.

“Snap?” she said.

“Yes? Is something wrong? You seem not quite yourself. You haven’t been sick, have you?”

“No, I’m fine. I’ve just been a little worried, that’s all.”

“What about?”

“You.”

“There was no need to worry about me,” he said. “I’ve been perfectly all right.”

“Did they treat you well?”

“Did who treat me well, mother?”

“Those men.”

“Oh, you don’t need to worry about any of that now,” he said. “It’s all in the past. The important thing is I’m home now.”

“You seem so different,” she said. “I hardly knew you.”

“Can’t a person change?” he said. “Become better?”

“Of course, he can!”

“I’m a different person now. The person I should have always been. I know I’ve failed you as a son, but now things are going to be different.”

“What happened to you while you were away?”

“Oh, we don’t need to talk about that now, mother. We can talk about that another time.”

“All right.”

He laughed and sat down on the couch, took both her hands and pulled her down beside him.

“I’ve never been happier,” he said, “than I am at this moment.”

“I just realized who it is you remind me of,” she said. “My father. I named you after him. He was Stanislaus but everybody called him Stan. He went away when I was nine years old and I never saw him again after that.”

“I’ve seen pictures of him.”

“He was always so dark and slim and handsome. I thought all the men in the world should look just like him.”

“I guess I should take it as a compliment, then,” he said, laughing and shaking his head.

“You must be starving! I have some steaks in the refrigerator that I’ve been saving for your homecoming.”

“Cherry pie,” he said.

“That goes without saying!”

“First I want to go upstairs and take a shower, if you don’t mind.”

“Lie down and rest and take a nap if you want. I’ll call you when dinner is ready.”

He picked up his suitcase and walked up the stairs, clothes neat, shoes shiny, waist trim. He looked so different from the Snap she had become so used to in recent years that she could hardly believe he was the same person. Miracles do happen, although not very often.

In the kitchen she turned on the broiler and the oven and took two steaks out of the refrigerator and unwrapped them and put them on a platter beside the sink. The sound of the shower running in Snap’s bathroom right above the kitchen made her heart glad. Finally, he was home!

She was setting the table in the dining room—Snap’s homecoming was too special an occasion to eat in the kitchen—when she heard someone knocking on the front door. With a handful of knives and forks in her hand, she went to the door and opened it. Her smile faded when she saw the same two men standing on the doorstep as before, the older man with gray hair and the younger man with no hair at all. They both wore dark suits and were officially grim as if they were acting in a television drama.

“Yes?” she said.

“Mrs. Oberhausen?” the younger man with no hair at all said.

“Yes,” she said.

“My name is Lonnie Swale. My partner here is Arthur Pogue. We’re with the city police department.”

“Yes?”

“Might we come in and have a word with you?”

“Well, I’m busy right now. What is the nature of your business?”

“Stanislaus Oberhausen is your son?”

“We always called him Snap.”

“I’m afraid we have some very bad news for you regarding your son.”

“What was that?”

“I said I’m afraid we have some very bad news.”

“He’s resting now, in his room. He just came home a little while ago and I don’t want to bother him.”

“Mrs. Oberhausen, we have some bad news about your son.”

“What is it? Can’t it wait until another time?”

“Mrs. Oberhausen, I’m sorry to inform you your son is dead. He took his own life in his jail cell early this morning. You have my condolences.”

“What did you say? That’s not possible. He’s upstairs in his bathroom taking a shower. I hear the water running. I’m fixing dinner for him.”

“Mrs. Oberhausen, is there someone else we can talk to?”

“No, they’re all dead. You’ll have to come back another time. Can’t you ever leave anybody alone?”

She closed the door with considerable force in the faces of the older man with gray hair and the younger man with no hair at all and locked it and went back into the kitchen. She put the steaks into the broiler and opened three cans of pie cherries and emptied them into a big bowl and began rolling out her piecrust on the counter. She could still hear the water running in the bathroom upstairs. She hoped her beloved Snap had enough towels and anything else he needed. In a little while she would go up and tap on the door and tell him that dinner was nearly ready.

Copyright © 2023 by Allen Kopp

Death and Dismemberment
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

Selma Bellinger murdered her husband of twenty-two years, Lloyd Bellinger, at the breakfast table on a Wednesday morning in June. It was not quite as impulsive an act as it might have seemed at the time. She had wanted to murder him for a long time.

He was a swine and a philistine. He didn’t like Bing Crosby or I Love Lucy. He didn’t laugh when Milton Berle dressed up in women’s clothes. He didn’t read good books and, in fact, didn’t read any books at all. He didn’t like Ravel’s Bolero or Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. He threw the wind chimes in the trash because the sound they made got on his nerves. He cut down all the rose bushes in the yard because he stuck a thorn in his fat thumb. He did whatever he wanted to do, without ever consulting Selma, believing he was lord and master and that his word was law. She had come to wonder whatever possessed her to marry him.

Selma had three cats—Fabian, Tiny and Adore—that she loved more than anything in the world. They were her children. They could do no wrong, even when they vomited on the living room carpet, sharpened their claws on the arm of the couch or jumped up on a shelf and knocked a dish or a cup off and broke it.

Lloyd didn’t like Selma’s cats or any cats. He would tolerate them only if he didn’t have to see them, and that wasn’t tolerating them at all. Selma tried to keep them away from Lloyd, but it wasn’t always easy. Cats have a mind of their own. They go where they want to go.

On the June morning in question, Lloyd had just sat down at the breakfast table to eat his breakfast, consisting of eggs, bacon and toast. He was buttering his toast when one of Selma’s cats, the one named Fabian, jumped up on the table and helped himself to a slice of bacon. Fabian had the bacon in his mouth and was about to jump onto the floor with it, when Lloyd saw what he was doing and smacked him over the head with the newspaper as if he were a pesky fly.

Fabian wasn’t accustomed to being punished or reprimanded for anything he ever did. Startled and chagrined at being hit with the newspaper, he hissed at Lloyd (rightfully so) and ran out of the room. He was a sensitive soul. His feelings were hurt and he would probably keep himself hidden away all morning.

Well, Selma could take a lot, but one thing she could not and would not take was seeing any of her cats mistreated. In that moment she loathed Lloyd more than she ever had before, loathed him so much that she had to do something about it. She picked up the cast-iron skillet, approached Lloyd from behind where he sat at the table, and hit him in the head with it, wielding it like a baseball bat. For a small woman, she had surprising strength in her swing.

The teacup he was holding flew against the wall and smashed and he fell off the chair. He lay on the floor, looking up at Selma and making pitiful little wah-wah-wah sounds with his mouth. It seemed he was asking her why she had chosen that particular moment to smash his head in. When she saw he wasn’t dead yet, she hit him again with the skillet—again and again—and then once again for good measure. Nothing ever felt so good.

Knowing that Lloyd was truly dead was the most exhilarating moment of Selma’s life. She wanted to scream for joy. She didn’t scream but instead sat down at the table and covered her face with her hands and cried the tears of happiness.

The cats, sensing that something interesting had happened, came into the room and approached Lloyd’s body cautiously: sniff, sniff, sniff, tails straight out behind them. When they satisfied themselves that Lloyd was dead and wasn’t going to rise up against them, they danced around in unabashed delight. Fabian was particularly joyful. He meowed his growling meow and brushed against Selma’s legs until she picked him up and stroked him under the chin and apologized for Lloyd’s hitting him with the newspaper. My poor little baby! How much do I love thee?  

She stepped over Lloyd’s body for the rest of the day, but by nightfall she knew, realistically, she was going to have to move it or cover it or take it out and bury it or do something with it. She thought about driving out into the country and burying it, but that was too risky and she didn’t relish the thought of getting a dead body into the car, driving out of town with it, and then digging a grave all on her own.

The basement seemed like a reasonable alternative to burial. It was quiet down there, dark and private. Nobody ever went down there.

So, she dragged her dead husband by the ankles across the kitchen floor to the door that led to the basement, opened the door and let the body tumble down the basement steps of its own accord: thumpity, thump, thump, thump! What a satisfying sound! What a wonderful thing was gravity!

She couldn’t leave him down there like that, in a heap at the bottom of the basement steps. In no time he’d smell something awful and the nosy neighbors would notice the smell and call the police. No, she couldn’t have that.

In the basement was a large, chest-like freezer. It was about half-full of meats and frozen foods at the moment. It seemed like the best place to keep a dead body until more permanent arrangements might be made.

She wasn’t sure if she could lift Lloyd’s body high enough to get it into the freezer on her own, but the way she saw it she didn’t have much choice. Supposing the gas man came and wanted to have a look at the gas meter, or the exterminators came for their yearly inspection? For obvious reasons, she couldn’t ask the next-door neighbors to come in and help her heave her husband’s dead body into the freezer. No, she had to do it on her own.

Lifting him was not a possibility, so she used a strong, light-weight rope. She tied the rope around the upper body and then, throwing the other end of the rope over a rafter, she elevated the body until the feet were barely grazing the floor. After securing the rope, she angled the body over the freezer and then cut the rope so that the body fell with a satisfying thunk on top of the steaks, lambchops, pizzas and frozen vegetables.

She closed the lid of the freezer and went back upstairs and had a well-earned rest.

She knew she wouldn’t be able to leave Lloyd in the freezer forever, but for the time being he was all right until she decided how to dispose of him. She would begin by telling people he had left her, for good this time, and she didn’t know where he went or when he’d be back. He always said he wanted to see the Volga River in Russia.

At the grocery store, she bought whatever her heart desired without thinking of the cost: a fancy cake with strawberries and whipped cream, a bottle of champagne, chocolate-covered nuts, caviar, and the most expensive cat foods from the pet aisle.

The next day she went to the Pet Adoption Agency and adopted three more cats, two males and a female, to go with the three she already had. She named the two males Felix and Buckwheat and the female Ann Darrow, after the screaming girl in King Kong. She had six little ones now to keep her from being lonely, to wake her up before daylight, beg for food in the kitchen, chase the dustmop and run from the vacuum cleaner.

Always at the back of her mind, though, no matter what she was doing, was Lloyd lying stiff in the freezer in the basement: his rotten heart suspended in his frozen chest; his frozen, joyless intestines; his staring eyes in his frozen face. If only she could make him disappear! If only she could wish him away forever!

It came to her in the night when she was sleeping: she had a meat saw that she never used. She would cut Lloyd into sections like the not-so-prize pig that he was and conceal his various parts in the trash, one piece at a time. The trash was picked up once a week. One piece of Lloyd a week until there were no more pieces left. Auf Wiedersehen, Lloyd!

Selma had never cut up a body before and was a little nervous. Would there be a lot of blood? Would she become nauseated? Would she feel remorse?

Armed with the meat saw and a pair of heavy work gloves, she crept down the basement stairs and flung open the lid of the freezer. Yes, Lloyd was still there, exactly as she had left him, only now he was Ice Age man, recently discovered under a glacier in Siberia. With some effort she lifted his right arm and began sawing a few inches above the thumb. The bone was a little stubborn, but the hand came off easier than she expected.

She wrapped the hand in old rags before it had a chance to thaw, tied it up with string, concealed it in the week’s trash inside a heavy black trash bag. The bag went into the trash can that she placed at the curb once a week. The trash truck would come along, the man would empty the can into the back of the truck without a thought, and she was well on her way to ridding the world of Lloyd Addison Bellinger!

 The next week it was the left hand and the week after that the right foot and the week after that the left foot, and so on, until Lloyd was armless and legless.

The head, when she cut it off, was heavier than she expected. She let it fall to the floor, ice-encrusted and solid as a cannonball. Crouching on her knees on the cold concrete floor, she cut the head into four neat sections, disposing of one-fourth each week for four weeks.

The thick part of the body, where the stomach, intestines and other organs were, was more problematic. She wasn’t able to cut all the way through this part of the body with the saw, so she cut off small chunks each week. If she had known any cannibals, she would have been happy to donate the chunks to their stew pot.

Finally, after weeks she hadn’t bothered to count, the last vestiges of Lloyd were gone. The last piece of him went out in the trash. She spent a whole day cleaning up in and around the freezer. She bleached, scrubbed, mopped and disinfected until her hands were raw.

To celebrate the completion of her difficult and distasteful task, she had her hair done in the most flattering Doris Day style and bought new furniture for the living room, donating the old to charity.

She was happy at last, but she knew that one day somebody would come around looking for Lloyd with some unfinished business. It happened sooner than she expected.

On a Saturday evening in early October, there was an insistent knocking at the front door. When she went to the door and opened it, she saw a gray-haired, middle-aged man she had never seen before standing on her doorstep.

“Yes?” she said.

“I’m looking for Lloyd Bellinger,” the man said.

“He’s not here.”

“Do you know when he’ll be back?”

“No.”

“Are you his wife?”

“I’m Mrs. Bellinger.”

“I really need to see Lloyd.”

“He isn’t here.”

“Do you know where he is?”

“No.”

“How long has he been gone?”

“You might tell me who you are and what you want with Lloyd before I answer any more questions,” she said.

“I’m Nelson, his brother.”

“He never mentioned he had a brother.”

“We were never close. Half-brothers, you know. Same father. Different mothers.”

“Funny he’s never mentioned you in all these years.”

“Would it be all right if I come inside?”

“Well…”

“I just walked all the way from the bus station. I was awake all night last night and I’m really tired.”

“Well, all right, but just for a little while. I’m expecting company.”

“That’s awfully good of you, ma’am,” he said, stepping through the door.

He hesitated in the doorway and then sat on the couch and smiled at her.

“What was it you wanted to see Lloyd about?” she asked.

“He has some property belonging to me. I came to get it.”

“What property would that be?”

“Some gold coins and a samurai sword.”

“I don’t think those things are here. Lloyd never mentioned them.”

“Look, do you think it would be all right if I lay down here on your couch and took a little rest? I’m not feeling very well.”

“I think it would be better if you just leave.”

“Just let me rest a while and I’ll feel better.”

He kicked off his shoes and lay back on the couch, positioning the sofa cushion under his head. He let out a breath, closed his eyes and went to sleep.

“You’ll have to go,” she said, but he didn’t hear her.

She went into the kitchen to call the police, but changed her mind after she picked up the phone. She let him come into the house. He hadn’t in any way threatened her. Suppose he really was Lloyd’s brother? She’d feel ridiculous if she called the police for nothing.

She waited patiently for two hours, thinking the whole time of what she would say to him to get him to leave. Finally he woke up, sat up on the couch and rubbed his eyes.

“What time is it?” he asked.

“It’s nearly eight. Don’t you have to catch your bus back to wherever you came from? I’m sorry you came all this way, but…”

“Gee, I’m hungry.”

“What?”

“I said I’m really hungry. That’s what woke me up.”

“I don’t have much food in the house.”

“Anything will do, ma’am. Don’t go to any trouble.”

She went into the kitchen and opened a can of vegetable soup and set it on the stove to heat. She opened a can of pears and poured them in a bowl and set the bowl in the middle of the table.

When the soup was hot enough, she went back into the living room to tell him to come into the kitchen and eat.

“Okay if I wash up first, ma’am?” he asked.

“At the end of the hall.”

Her patience was wearing thin.

He came into the kitchen, drying his hands on the front of his shirt. He smiled at her and she gestured for him to sit at the table.

He began slurping the soup. She took a box of crackers out of the cabinet and set it on the table.

“Thank you, ma’am. I wonder if I might trouble you for some coffee.”

“I don’t have any coffee, only iced tea.”

“Iced tea is my favorite.”

“After you eat, I’m going to have to ask you to leave. I have guests arriving any minute.”

She poured the tea into a glass and set it on the table in front of him.

“Sit down and let’s talk,” he said.

“There isn’t anything to…”

“Just sit.”

She pulled out the chair across from him and sat down.

“I think you do know where Lloyd is, don’t you?” he said.

“You’re not really his brother, are you?”

“Half-brother.”

“I don’t think you’re any relation at all.”

“So, I think you’re lying and you think I’m lying. Now, what are we going to do about it?”

“I’m going to give you about two minutes to get out of my house.”

“Or you’ll do what?”

“Call the police.”

“I don’t think you’ll do that.”

“Why not?”

“You’re afraid of what I’ll tell them.”

She laughed or tried to laugh. “You can’t bluff me, Mr. Whoever-You-Are!  You’re just a bum who showed up at my door. Why should I believe anything you say?”

“You don’t need to insult me, ma’am,” he said.

He finished the soup and began eating the canned pears in the bowl.

“When you’re finished eating, I want you to leave.”

“You know, you have a beautiful house here? A big house! I’ll bet it’s worth a lot.”

“Thanks for stopping by today!” she said, standing up from the table. “I’ll tell Lloyd what a lovely visit we had.”

“Don’t think I’m going away empty-handed, dear! Lloyd owes me and, since he’s not here, I think you should be the one to pay up. Isn’t that the way it works? When the husband is gone, the little wifey is responsible for his debts?”

“I don’t know anything about gold coins or a samurai sword.”

“I believe you, so that’s why I think a cash settlement is in order.”

“Cash settlement? I don’t have any cash in the house.”

“Yes, but I’m sure you have it in the bank.”

“It’s Saturday night. The bank is closed.”

“That’s why I’m going to stay here for a few days and keep you company.”

“You can’t stay here! I have guests coming! I already told you!”

“That’s another lie. There aren’t any guests! I don’t know how you can lie so!”

“I’ll let you have two hundred dollars if you go away and leave me alone.”

“I think we can do a lot better than that,” he laughed. “I was thinking more in the neighborhood of ten thousand.”

“I’m not giving you ten thousand dollars! I don’t even know who you are!”

“You don’t believe I’m Lloyd’s brother?”

“No! Lloyd never had a brother!”

“Don’t you see the family resemblance?”

“There isn’t any! You’re just trying to extort money from me. That’s a crime!”

“So is murder.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do. I know you murdered Lloyd and I know how you did it.”

“That’s ridiculous! I could never murder Lloyd! I could never murder anybody!”

“I was watching you the whole time.”

“That’s not possible! You don’t know anything about me!”

“I know enough.”

“You’re raving like a lunatic! I’m going to call the police!”

“And tell them what? That you murdered your husband?”

“I never murdered anybody!”

“I assume you’re willing to pay, then, to keep me quiet?”

She sat back down at the table, in a sort of a daze.

“You can stay until Monday,” she said. “I think we can come to some kind of an arrangement before then. You can sleep in the guestroom.”

“Don’t go to any trouble, ma’am. I can sleep on that couch in there.”

“You’re not really Lloyd’s brother, are you?”

“We’ll talk about that later. I’m going to be around for a while. And, who knows? You might come to like me in time. I’m not a bad fellow.”

“And what will you do if Lloyd comes back and finds you here?”

“We both know that’s not going to happen, don’t we?”

“I don’t know anything.”

“You know what? I’m still hungry! The Campbell’s vegetable soup and the canned pears were delicious, but they were as an appetizer to the main course. How about cooking me up something special like a good little wife? I’ll bet you’re a good cook.”

“What would you like?”

“Whatever you have on hand, ma’am. I don’t want to put you to any trouble.”

“I have some chicken thawing in the refrigerator, ready to fry.”

“Perfect! I love fried chicken!”

“Just sit right there, then. It won’t take long.”

“You bet I will!”

He was sitting in Lloyd’s chair at the table. She lifted the same cast-iron skillet above her head that she used in killing Lloyd. Wielding the skillet like a baseball bat, she hit him with all her might just above the ear. He bellowed like a bull and tried to stand up. She hit him again and then again, until he fell to the floor, flopping like a fish out of water. When he stopped struggling—stopped moving—she knew he was dead.

Sensing that something exciting had happened, the cats came into the room: first Adore and then Ann Darrow, followed by Buckwheat and Fabian, with Tiny and Felix bringing up the rear. They danced around the body on the floor, sniffing, waving their tails and mewing. They showed they were delighted. They showed they heartily approved.

Copyright © 2023 by Allen Kopp

Odell the First
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

(This short story has been published in The Literary Hatchet.)

I got a letter from my mother, the first in five years. She told me she was dying and that I’d better come home. More of a command than a request. I was ready to toss the letter aside and ignore it, but I suppose I still had something in me like a conscience. I loaded all my worldly goods in my old station wagon, vacated my apartment and headed north.

I drove the three hundred and fifty miles over two days, spending the night in a cheap roadside motel where the crickets wouldn’t let me sleep. When I got home it was two in the a.m. I knew the doors would be locked so I let myself in by a window in the hallway off the kitchen, a trick I had learned when I was twelve years old. I hoped my mother wouldn’t shoot me for a burglar as I made me way through the dark house and up the stairs to my old room. I took off my shoes and lay on the bed in my clothes without getting under the covers and soon I was asleep, more tired than I thought.

When I woke up the next morning and saw it was after ten, I started to get up and realized my mother was standing in the doorway looking at me.

“You’re lucky I didn’t shoot you,” she said.

“If you had a telephone,” I said, “I would have called.”

“Don’t want one,” she said.

When I went down to the kitchen, she was cooking eggs and ham. I took my place at the table as if I hadn’t been away for decades. She poured me a cup of tea—we were never coffee drinkers—and set a plate of food in front of me.

“You home to stay?” she asked.

“It depends,” I said as I started to eat.

“On what? On whether there’s anything in it for you?”

“Well, is there?”

“The house is in your name. When I’m gone, it’s yours to do with as you please. You can sell it.”

“Nobody would ever want it. It’s too far from town.”

“You can live here, then, as long as you live or as long as you want, and take care of him.”

 I looked at her as if I couldn’t believe the words that were coming out of her mouth.

“That’s no kind of life,” I said. “I think I might get lonely.”

“Get yourself a wife and have some children.”

“Phhft!” I said, almost choking on the tea. “We’ll forget you ever said that!”

“You know why I wanted you here,” she said.

“Maybe you need to remind me.”

“I’ll be dead soon.”

“I don’t believe it. You’ll outlive everybody I know.”

“When the time comes, I have specific instructions. I’ve written them down. Call the funeral home in town. I want a simple service and I want to go into the ground beside your father.”

“Ugh! That’s no kind of talk for the breakfast table.”

“I’ve never asked anything of you in your life,” she said.

“I know.”

“I wouldn’t be asking you now if there was anybody else.”

“That’s so sweet!” I said.

“The main thing is Odell.”

“I know.”

“I want you to take care of him after I’m gone.”

“Mother, I can’t do that!” I said, setting the cup down with a clatter. “I’m not going to devote my whole life to taking care of a person who isn’t my responsibility.”

“I know it’s asking a lot,” she said, “but there’s nobody else.”

“There’s places for people like him,” I said.

“I know there are places,” she said, “but I’ve always kept him with me. This is his home.”

“I won’t promise that I won’t put him in a hospital for the criminally insane the minute your back is turned.”

“Well, we’ll see,” she said mildly, and I knew the subject, for the time being at least, was closed.

After breakfast she took me down to the basement where Odell was kept. It was more like a room in the house now than the dungeon it had been before I went away. The chains were gone and had been replaced by bars on the windows. There was a regular bed with sheets and pillows instead of a mat on the floor, and other comforts, such as a table, a lamp and pictures on the wall, one of a horse standing in a field and another of a sunset over the ocean.

When Odell saw me, a spark in his eyes told me he remembered me.

“Brother?” he said.

“He’s talking now?” I asked.

“Yes, he’s learned a few words,” mother said. “I think he seems less like an animal when he speaks.”

He was sitting in an old upholstered chair by the bed. She went over to him and pulled him to his feet. He opened his mouth wide as if to receive food and she laughed.

“No, it’s not time to eat,” she said. “I want you to stand up and greet your brother.”

Odell looked at me over mother’s shoulder as I stepped closer to him. The sharp, fox-like face was the same, but his look had softened somehow. He was less like an animal now and more human-like. His face was shaved and his hair clipped and combed. The teeth had been filed down.

“You’ve done wonders with him!” I said, genuinely surprised.

“You don’t think they could have done anything for him in one of those places, do you?” she said.

At mealtime she showed me how to prepare his food: one slice of bread and a piece of meat cut up into tiny pieces, served on a large tin plate. That’s all he wanted, she said, three times a day.

When it was time to change the sheets on his bed or straighten up the room or groom Odell, she made me go down to the basement with her and watch how it was done. I knew she was preparing me to take over for her after she was gone, but I still wasn’t ready to assume that responsibility.

“He likes to look at pictures in magazines,” she said. “When you go to town, buy him a couple of new ones with lots of pictures. Or comic books. He loves comic books.”

“Does he read them?”

“No, but he looks at the words and pretends he’s reading.”

“Teach him to read and maybe he can get a job teaching in a university.”

“Read to him when you get the chance. He loves Dickens.”

“Dickens?”

 “Yes, we’re about halfway through The Old Curiosity Shop.”

“He’s more human now than he was before, isn’t he?”

“Yes, but he’s still a wild animal. Be gentle with him or he’ll rip your arm out of its socket.”

“I’ll certainly remember that!” I said.

A week later she died, simply and without fanfare, in her sleep. I think she knew exactly when it was going to happen, down to the minute. I hoped that when my time came, I could go with such grace and ease.

I called the funeral home and they took care of everything, including registering the death certificate. The graveside service was sparsely attended. Besides me, there was the minister to intone a couple of Bible verses, two funeral home men and two old ladies from town who probably never met my mother but who had certainly heard her name. As I left the cemetery, I felt relieved of a terrible burden and I planned, over the next week or so, to find a good place to put Odell, where he would be safe and comfortable and as happy as it was possible for him to be. Then I would move on.

I put the house on the market but I was sure nobody would want to buy it. There were too many rooms and it was too hard to heat in the winter. If nobody wanted to live there, somebody might open a haunted house and charge admission. I was sure I had seen a ghost or two walking the halls.

The day after mother’s funeral I saw that Odell knew something was wrong. I took him his food and he ate it but finally he looked at me with his sad eyes and said, “Mother?”

I knew the moment would come when I would have to tell him. I sat down in the chair beside the bed and put my hands on my thighs—a gesture of trust, I hoped.

“Mother gone away,” I said.

“Where?”

“Remember father?” I asked.

“Father?”

“Yes. Remember when he want away?”

“Father?”

“Well, mother has gone to be with father. One day we’ll see her again.”

“Not come back?”

“No, but you don’t need to worry. I’m here and I’m going to take care of you.”

“Mother!” he said, beginning to cry.

“I know,” I said, “but I’m afraid you’re just going to have to get used to the idea.”

He began scowling at me whenever I went down to the basement, disappointed that I wasn’t mother. He still remained manageable and docile, though. I took him some new magazines with pictures of animals and airplanes and he seemed happy with them. He ate all his food and when I told him he had to take a bath I filled the tub with hot water and he got in and washed himself all over.

Every evening when I took him his supper, he would gesture toward the barred window.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Me,” he said. “Outside.”

“I’m afraid you can’t go outside. It’s dangerous for you out there.”

“No! I walk.”

“You want me to take you for a walk?”

“No! Alone.”

“How do I know you’d come back?” I ask.

“Come back!”

“What if you get into trouble?”

“No!”

His pleas to go outside at night became more emphatic and more-oft repeated. He had been locked up in the basement for I don’t know how many years without respite. He wanted desperately to get out on his own, out of the basement, for just a little while, and who could blame him? It might make him more manageable when the time came for me to uproot him and place him in an institution. I decided we would try it one night and see how it went.

On a Friday evening in October I stayed with him while he ate his supper and when he was finished and pushed the plate aside I pulled him to his feet. When he looked at me questioningly, I put father’s old jacket on him, an old fedora hat and some battle-scarred boots and then I pointed toward the door.

“Where?” he asked.

“You wanted to go for a walk,” I said. “Then go for a walk.”

“Alone?”

“Yes, but I have to tell you if you don’t come back before morning you won’t go out again.”

“Morning,” he said.

“And if you get into any trouble or cause any mischief, I’ll say you got out on your own and I didn’t know about it.”

“My own.”

I took him by the arm and propelled him toward the door. “Remember,” I said. “Come back before daylight. And don’t wake me up. I’ll leave the door unlocked for you.”

That night was the first cold night of autumn and I slept soundly. When I got up the next morning, the first thing I did was to go down to the basement to make sure Odell made it back. He was asleep. The jacket was draped neatly over the chair and the boots were side by side on the floor beside the bed.

He wanted to go out the next night and the night after that and I didn’t object. I wondered where he was going but I knew if I asked him he wouldn’t be able to tell me. I pictured him wandering around in the woods and fields, marveling at the wonders of nature, and running like a scared rabbit if he saw anybody.

On the fourth night, Monday, it was raining and I thought to keep him at home, but after he ate his dinner I knew he was planning on going out again and I hated to disappoint him. As he went out the door, I said, “Remember. You have to be back before the sun comes up.” He nodded his head and I knew he understood what I was saying.

The next morning I woke up early, barely daylight, with a bad headache. I went downstairs to the kitchen to find some aspirin and when I looked out the window I saw Odell coming into the yard from the back pasture. He was carrying something in his arms. I ran out the door in my bathrobe.

“What is that?” I said, but by then it was apparent it was a limp body.

He laid his burden down on the flagstone walk and smiled at me. “Mother,” he said.

“Oh, my god!” I said. “What have you done?”

“Mother!” he said again.

“That’s not mother! You’ve killed somebody!”

It was a stout middle aged woman with gray hair, bearing little or no resemblance to mother. She was considerably mauled and obviously dead. Her eyes were open and also her mouth, as if she had screamed in the middle of dying.

“Where did you find this woman?” I said.

He pointed vaguely over his shoulder and laughed.

“It’s not funny!” I said. “Do you know what they’ll do you when they find out you did this?”

“Hurt,” he said.

“Yes, they’ll hurt you. They’ll do worse than that. They’ll lock you up forever and ever and they won’t let you come home again.”

“No!” he said, his eyes filling with fear.

“Yes! That was a very naughty thing for you to do! People don’t look kindly on that sort of thing!”

“Nobody see!”

“You’d better hope nobody saw or your goose is cooked!”

“Goose?”

“Never mind! Go into the shed and get a shovel and take this deep into the woods and bury it. Bury it deep. If they ever find out what you’ve done, they’ll be very angry with you. Do you understand? Go get the shovel and take it into the woods and bury it where nobody will find it!”

While he ran off to the shed to get the shovel, I took an old horse blanket from the back porch and covered the woman’s face and upper body with it so I wouldn’t have to look at her eyes.

It rained all morning. Odell came home about eleven o’clock, covered with mud. He went to put the shovel away and when he came into the house I was waiting for him.

“Did you do what I said?” I asked.

“Bury deep,” he said.

“Where?”

“Deep in woods. Nobody go there.”

“Go to your room and get yourself cleaned up,” I said.

For the rest of the day I expected a squad of police officers to show up at the door, but I saw no one. The next day I went into town to buy a newspaper, a carton of milk and a loaf of bread.

“Did you hear about the mayor’s wife?” the cashier asked as I paid for my purchases.

“No, I didn’t,” I said. “What about her?”

“She disappeared.”

“Where?”

“She went out for a walk after supper and when she didn’t come home the mayor called the po-lice.”

“As he should have,” I said.

“There’s all kinds of rumors about what happened to her, but I’m not sure I believe any of them. What I do believe is that she had a lover.”

“A lover?”

“Yeah. You know. A man from the city. Everybody knew she had been cheatin’ on the mayor ever since they was married.”

“No!” I said.

“Everybody’s out looking for her now. When they find her, they’ll bring her back and it won’t be pretty. The mayor will probably want a divorce now.”

“I can’t say I blame him.”

I went out to my car and unfolded the newspaper. In a sleepy town where not much ever happens, the disappearance of the wife of an important man is big news. I could tell from the pictures that it was the same woman that Odell had brought home. All I could do now was pretend I knew nothing about it and hope that Odell had done a thorough and complete job of burying the body.

That evening after Odell ate his supper, I knew he was expecting to go out again, but I told him very emphatically that he could not. He became enraged and I knew he could easily break me in half if he had wanted to. I didn’t know how to control him when he was that way, so I locked him in for the night and went back upstairs. I hoped he would be better by the next day.

When I took him his breakfast in the morning, he glared at me with something like hatred because I wasn’t mother.

“Mother?” he said.

“She’s gone,” I said with impatience, “and she’s not coming back.”

“Where?”

“She’s dead, Odell. She’s in heaven with the angels.”

“I find,” he said.

“No, you won’t find her unless you go to Windy Hill Cemetery and dig up her grave.”

“I dig,” he said, reaching for the jacket and boots he had worn when he went out before.

“No, no, no!” I said. “You are in serious trouble! You murdered a woman that you thought was mother and now you have to keep yourself hidden away!”

“Go out!” he said, pointing to the door.

“You can’t go out! All I can do for you now is to keep you hidden away. If they come for you, I’ll have to give you up.”

“Give me up?”

He came at me with his glaring hatred and I got out as fast as I could. Now I was afraid of him. I wanted to keep both my arms in their sockets, as well as my legs and other body parts.

I expected every day for somebody to come and take Odell away, but nobody ever came. At night I could hear him wailing with grief for mother and I covered my head with my pillow. I was glad that nobody else was close enough to hear.

I didn’t know what I was going to do with him, but I believed I owed it to him to protect him as long as I could. I didn’t want to see him face punishment in prison for something he didn’t understand. I also didn’t want to see the ignorant hillbillies in and around town try to take justice into their own hands and lynch him. I had heard of such things happening before.

After two weeks, I figured we were safe. The prevailing belief was that the mayor’s wife had run off with her lover and might never be found. Because I was afraid of Odell, I no longer groomed him properly, bathed him or straightened up his room. I only opened his door wide enough to put his food inside.

One night my mother came to me in a dream. She stood beside my bed and told me to do what needed to be done. I didn’t know what she meant at first and then I remembered she always kept a loaded pistol in the drawer of the table next to her bed. She was telling me to get the pistol and pop a cap into Odell’s head from behind when he wasn’t looking.

The gun was where I thought it would be, and fully loaded. I would only need one bullet, unless, of course, I decided to do away with myself after I did away with Odell. I took The Old Curiosity Shop with me when I took him his supper and had the gun in my pocket where he couldn’t see it.

He seemed calm now and almost glad to see me. I read a few pages out loud while he ate his food and then I stopped reading and moved around behind him. I took the gun out and pointed it at the back of his head as he chewed. When he turned around and looked at me, I slid the gun back into my pocket. I knew I would never have the courage to shoot him. I would sooner be able to shoot myself.

“Mother,” he said.

“You need a haircut,” I said.

“Mother. Bring here.”

“I’m going to teach you to string words together into sentences so we can have a real conversation,” I said.

“Mother.”

I went to bed early and about one o’clock I got out of bed and looked out the window. The yard and trees were beautiful in the moonlight. I got dressed without turning on a light, put on my boots and hat and went down to the basement and woke Odell. I helped him into his clothes and boots and then led him out to my car. We drove out to lonely Windy Hill Cemetery and dug up my mother’s grave. He was much stronger than I was and, after we had dug down so far, he was able to lift the coffin out of the ground and together we carried it to the car. Then we smoothed out what had been her grave to make it seem undisturbed, except by maybe a groundhog or two.

I drove slow with headlights off and the back door partly open. Odell rode in the back to make sure the thing stayed steady. When we got home, we carried it in and set it on sawhorses in the basement where he would be able to look at it whenever he wanted. I opened the lid and he gasped with astonishment, his eyes filling with tears. She looked as if she would wake up any second and speak to us.

Copyright © 2023 by Allen Kopp

Tractor Pulls and Wrestle Mania
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

My mother-in-law’s name is Agnes Hollenfeld. She has pink hair and looks like Edward G. Robinson in the 1931 gangster movie Little Caesar. Any time I see her, I expect her to be wearing a double-breasted suit with a machine gun as a fashion accessory, but instead she’s wearing a horned helmet and an iron breastplate, like a tiny Brunehilde (complete with the German accent). Yes, she’s very small but don’t be fooled by her size. She would cut off your head with her battle-axe and serve it to the neighborhood dogs and then, without missing a beat, go inside and watch today’s episode of General Hospital.

Agnes doesn’t have very high regard for men. She has had four husbands. Two of them died and the other two escaped. Of the two that died, one of them, Julius, had his heart burst (or, as Agnes likes to say, his heart “busted”), and the other one, Hec, committed suicide by hanging himself from a rafter in the attic. Agnes was very put out with Hec because he hadn’t finished his housework. When he was laid out at the funeral home (with a smile on his face), she was there with a big bag of pork rinds in one hand and a pint of malt liquor in the other. When she lit a cigarillo over Hec’s casket with a lighter like a torch, it activated the very sensitive fire sprinklers, and water came pouring down on her and poor dead Hec. She threatened to sue the funeral home because she had spent four hours that day at Mitzie’s House of Beauty getting her hair re-pinked.

Agnes’s best friend is a former lady boxer named Doris Grotnick. Agnes brought Doris along one Thanksgiving to our house for dinner. Doris proudly raised her sleeve and showed us the tattoo of the grim reaper on her upper arm and then she informed us that “Grim Reaper” was her professional name when she was in wrestling. After dinner, Agnes and Doris sat at the kitchen table arm-wrestling and drinking margaritas, while the rest of us ate pumpkin pie and watched Miracle on 34^th Street on television.

More than anything else, Agnes and Doris love sports, but especially wrestling. They go to all the matches and have their favorite wrestlers. Agnes calls them “my boys.” She got arrested at one of the wrestling matches because she had too much to drink and wouldn’t sit down and shut up. When security guards came and tried to make her leave, she hit him one of them in the face and broke his nose. When we went to bail her out of jail the next day, she had the man’s blood all over her clothes and underneath her fingernails.

Next to wrestling, Agnes and Doris, these two paragons of refinement, love tractor pulls. They watch tractor pulls on TV and get so excited they pull down the curtains and bust up the furniture. Agnes screams at the tractor she hopes will win, jumps up and down and flails her fists. One time she accidentally clopped Doris on the side of the head with her doubled-up fist and knocked her out. She waited until the tractor pull was over (her tractor won) and then called for an ambulance. Doris was taken to the hospital and spent two weeks recovering from a concussion.

We found out later that Doris Grotnick was a Satan worshipper and that she persuaded Agnes to join her “church” (or “anti-church” if you prefer). They both dressed in black and went arm-in-arm to all the services. Agnes told us that making Satan her master was the best thing she had ever done and that it had “set her free.” She tried to get the rest of us interested in Satanism. She gave us pamphlets to read, extolling the value of Satan worship, but I refused to look at them and threw them in the trash.

Agnes and Doris became minor celebrities for a time when they appeared on a TV talk show in white makeup as witches and practitioners of black magic. They moaned, frothed at the mouth and rolled around on the floor to invoke the spirit of Satan for the studio audience. My wife was embarrassed and refused to leave the house for a few days. She realized, finally, that her mother was insane. I had known it all along.

For Christmas Agnes bought three cemetery plots, one for herself, one for my wife and one for me. I was to be on one side of her and my wife on the other side. We were her children. Children of Satan. That’s when I decided I was going to be cremated.

Copyright © 2023 by Allen Kopp