Bitch Mother

by Mike Monson

My mother is a bitch.

There, I’ve said it, finally. Damn, that felt good.

Now, I need to just kill her and get it over with. I’ve got her trapped in the Airstream, her hands tied to the little refrigerator doors, screaming and kicking and saying, “Goddamn it, Jesse, let me loose!”

Fuck that. I’ve been following her orders for 27 years and what has it got me? Nothing. It’s time for me to act, time for me to be the big deal.

I already killed my stepdad Charlie, shot him in the face with his own double-barreled sawed-off shotgun. I liked that and wished I could bring him back to life again and again and shoot him over and over, but the sucker won’t move, just lays there on the sofa, headless, without even a mouth to grin his fucking foolish grin.

“I always knew you were greedy,” I tell the bitch.

I grab the full container of gas and pour some over Charlie.

“But I had no idea,” I say. I start spreading more gas, all over.

“Jesse!” she screams, wide eyed. “What . . . the . . . fuck . . . do you think you are doing?”

God, she looks ugly sitting there, writhing around.

When I was a kid, I thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world, with her blonde hair and big boobs and miniskirts and high-heeled boots. But now, she is all wrinkled and botoxed to shit with an orange spray tan and gray hair bleached to a white hideous tangle.

“Thought you were going to cheat me again, huh?” I ask the bitch. “Big, fat, ugly, dumb Jesse.”

We were a crew of four: Mother, me, Charlie, and my big brother Dusty. We’d been doing robberies since I was a kid. We moved from town to town pulling the trailer. We had friends all over the country that clued us in on “opportunities” in exchange for a piece of the action. We’d hit banks, jewelry stores, houses, and then move on before shit got too hot.

We always did okay: small scores, big scores, fucked-up zero scores. But this one was different, this time we’d lucked into a huge amount of cash, probably twice as much as every other robbery combined. And, it turns out we’d robbed some powerful people and had to get the fuck out of town—now.

“When Dusty gets here with the money, we can straighten this all out,” she says.

“Dusty is dead,” I tell her. “Don’t pretend you don’t know.”

“What the fuck?”

I pick up the shotgun, dump the empty shells and put two more in from the box on the kitchen table. I jerk the weapon closed like some kind of movie gangster, and point the thing at Mother’s head.

“For once I’m not the last person to know what the fuck is going on,” I say. “I heard Charlie on the phone through the window as I was walking up. You and he were making your final plans. And he admitted everything just before I killed him. You’d kill Dusty, dump the body, and bring the money here, while Charlie took care of me with the sawed-off.  Then you two would burn my corpse up along with this trailer before getting the fuck out of town. I mean, shit, this gas can was just sitting on the table here.”

“I was just with Dusty,” she says. “He dropped me off and was going to go get some beer and come back so we could split the cash. Just like we always do. What the fuck.”

God, I thought, that bitch is such a great liar. I almost believed her.

Mother opens her mouth to speak again and I give her both barrels right in the face. Incredible gore: blood and flesh and brain and skull everywhere.

I hear the sound of the last of the toxic air escape from her withered lungs through a hole above her throat.  I pour gas all over her body and then some more all around the trailer. I grab my Zippo lighter out of my pocket and head for the door with the gas can just as Dusty walks in carrying a 36-pack of Coors, the duffel bag full of money slung over his shoulder.

Dusty looks at me. He looks at Charlie on the sofa and at Mother splattered all over the kitchen. He sets the beer on the floor but he keeps the bag. I know he has a pistol tucked in his boot. He always has a pistol tucked in his boot and a vicious sharp knife on his belt. Dusty is a very violent guy.

“Do you want a beer?” he asks.

He reaches down for the beer but comes up with the pistol.

“I thought you were dead,” I say.

“No,” he answers, “I guess I’m not.”

“Neither am I,” I say.

“Not yet,” he says.

He starts to raise the gun at the same time I whack him across the face with the gas can. He goes down, stunned, bleeding through a cut above his eyes.  

I grab the bag and his gun. I open the door and step outside. Dusty is on his feet now, blinded by the blood streaming into his eyes.

I shoot him three times in the chest and he goes down, right on top of Mother.

I look in the bag. Instead of money, it is full of torn-up old newspapers.

I bundle up some of the paper, light it with the Zippo, and when the flames seem big enough, I throw it into the trailer.

Whoosh.

I back up and watch as the fire engulfs Dusty and Mother and then Charlie. I close the door. I begin to run and I can hear the rest of the shotgun shells explode: Boom! Boom! Boom!

God, I hate always being the last one to know what the fuck is going on.

Mike Monson works as a paralegal in downtown San Francisco and lives in Modesto, CA. He's had stories published in Literary Orphans, Shotgun Honey, and Flash Fiction Offensive as well as Yellow Mama. He also has stories included in upcoming anthologies from All Due Respect, Out of the Gutter, and Near to the Knuckle.