I settled into the sofa, preparing to gorge myself on the brainless mind-candy of a trashy magazine—specifically, a deep dive into whether Carrot Top or Kathy Griffin was the “truer” redhead. It was the kind of low-stakes feud I lived for. When the phone rang, I didn’t even look at the caller ID. I just crabbed, “Whoever this is, make it quick. I’m in the middle of a ginger-war.”
The silence on the other end lasted a beat too long. Then, a voice as cold as a morgue slab said, “This is the Kansas City Police Department. Are you Leslie Allen’s sister?”
The blood didn’t just drain from my face; it felt like it evaporated. “Yes. I’m Kim. What happened?”
The officer’s voice sounded submerged, gurgling through a bad connection. “Your mother is on the phone with dispatch right now. You need to get to her house immediately.”
“Is Leslie okay?” My mind did that frantic thing where it tries to catalog a lifetime in three seconds. I saw Leslie holding my hair back while I puked on Prom night. I saw us standing over Dad’s grave while the fall leaves crunched like brittle bones under our feet. But mostly, I saw her standing at the altar 20 years ago, ignoring my pleas, and tying her life to Geoffrey.
Geoffrey. The man who wore a beekeeper suit to our 4th of July barbecue as a protective shield against Influenza, Bird Flu, Monkey Pox, Ebola, and Covid.
“Ma’am,” the officer interrupted my spiral. “Get over there now. And for God’s sake, take your husband with you.”
I didn’t ask why. In our family, when the police tell you to bring backup to your mother’s house, you don’t ask questions. You just grab your keys and hope the blood on the floor isn’t someone you share DNA with.
I screamed, loud and shrill enough to curdle the ears of anyone within a twenty mile radius. My husband Joe, aka, The Incredible Hulk charged into the room like a Pamplona Spanish bull, nostrils flaring, voice raspy. ” What’s going on?”
I collapsed into his massive arms and sobbed, “It’s Leslie. We need to go to Mom’s now. The police said it’s an emergency. I think she’s dead.”
He balled his hands into fists, the tattoos on his forearms and biceps pulsing. “Geoffrey,” he said, teeth gritted. “I told her but she wouldn’t listen, never trust a guy who designates every other Friday as ‘Pamper Day.’ Fucking A, a grown ass man plopping his sorry butt into a chair getting mani/ pedis while his wife works her tail off to pay for his damned harpsichord lessons.”
“Dulcimer, not harpsichord,” I whispered cautiously. It was a sore point between Joe and me. Geoffrey begged me for 1500 dollars to buy a dulcimer, with which he’d make bank playing at Renaissance Fairs all across the Midwest. It sits dusty in his closet as does his promise of paying me back “pronto.”
“Whatever, Kim. Just get in the truck.”
We rolled down the two-lane highway, the wheat fields of our Kansas town shimmering in the glow of a beautiful sunset. The hot, humid air trapped the earthy, pungent aromas of soybeans and hay. It was too pretty for a murder. The continuous sound of my choked-back tears led Joe to think I was dry-heaving.
He rolled down my window and snapped, “Come on. If you’re going to hurl, do it out the window. Just because your car is a shithole doesn’t mean mine has to be.”
The floodgate broke. Hot, sticky tears fell from my eyes. “For your information,” I warbled, “I’m absolutely gutted, and all you’re worried about is the inside of your precious F-150.”
I buried my face in my hands, trying to drown out Sturgill Simpson singing “A Little Light” on Joe’s playlist.
He slammed on the brakes. The truck skidded, tires screeching until we came to an abrupt stop on the shoulder. He wrapped his massive arms around me. “Babe, I’m sorry. So sorry. You can puke in my truck anytime you want. And I want you to know… I’ll raise Calvin and Hobbs like they’re my own boys. We’ll take care of them. Lord knows with those names, they’ll need all the help they can get.”
Geoffrey had pressed a pink Daisy razor to his own jugular, threatening a slashing if Leslie didn’t agree to naming their now fifteen-year-old twin sons after the iconic comic strip. But now he was too busy being a ghost to notice them. When Geoffrey wasn’t perched in front of the TV watching reruns of Sid Roth’s It’s Supernatural, he was in the basement mass-producing prune-flavored Kombucha in a filthy bathtub.
He had peddled his “health tonic” at every farmers market in the state until the health department shut him down. Twelve people were stricken with E. coli poisoning—a “Double Diarrhea” situation caused by the combination of aseptic failure and prune ingestion.
Leslie had taught the boys to drive a stick-shift. Joe took them skeet shooting. I showed them the proper way to write a check. Geoffrey provided the E. coli.
I squeezed Joe’s calloused hand and didn’t let go until we reached Mom’s.
She was sitting on the living room floor, cross-legged, her phone balanced between her right shoulder and ear. Her skin was ashen gray, and her eyes—usually flinty and judgey-looking—were dimmed and hollowed out.
She whispered in a monotone, “Geoffrey called me. He said he killed Leslie and the boys.”
The world tilted. I dropped to my knees, an otherworldly howl ripping from my throat. “No! No! No!”
Joe turned into a wooden soldier, his face a mask of stone, repeating a grim mantra: “I knew it would happen. I knew it.”
But then, I heard my mom’s voice. It was that flat, Midwestern intonation where the “R’s” are hard enough to break teeth. She was talking to the dispatcher.
“No, officer,” she said, her voice steady and matter-of-fact. “I never knew him to have weapons of any kind. And frankly… he’s too lazy to kill anybody.”
Too lazy to kill anybody.
The phrase hit me like a physical blow. I stopped screaming and repeated it in my mind over and over until a rip-roar of a laugh tore loose from my lips, hatching a flurry of unstoppable chuckles and snorts. Within seconds, I was rolling on the carpet, clutching my stomach, screaming in a different kind of pain.
“Too lazy!” I gasped between heaving breaths. “Oh my God! Too lazy!”
Joe looked down at me like I’d finally joined Geoffrey in the psyche ward. But I couldn’t stop. In the middle of the darkest night of our lives, my mother had just delivered the most accurate performance review of Geoffrey’s entire existence. He couldn’t finish a dulcimer apprenticeship, he couldn’t keep E. coli out of his bathtub juice, and apparently, he couldn’t even manage a homicide.
I was still on the floor somewhere between a sob and a snort when the doorbell rang. Joe bolted toward it, arms swaying like he was about to dismantle whoever was on the other end.
“Afternoon folks, I’m Sergeant Brown.” He removed his hat, cradling it like a newly born baby. ” We just got an update on your family member, he’s at um, at Kwik Trip just off I-35.”
Mom stared blankly, still cross legged on the floor looking like a stoic Kansas yogi.
Joe’s eyes flashed with rage. “Was he arrested and charged with…”
Sergeant Brown, interrupted, shaking his head. “No Sir he was not. He didn’t kill anybody. Everyone’s fine.”
Mom looked up in triumph, her tongue pulverizing every consonant into Midwestern dialect dust. ” Too lazy just like I said. I was right all along.” She paused and smiled, “Could I offer you some apple crisp and a cup of Sanka officer?”
“No thank you ma’am, I just ate. Like I was saying, we talked to your daughter and her boys and they were shocked to hear they’d been massacred.”
Mom scrunched her face and glared at me when my uncontrollable laughter returned with a vengeance. Her index finger twitched, a warning sign since childhood that I was about to get a butt-whooping if I didn’t stop. In the span of two seconds I went tomb silent and mouthed, ” Sorry Mom.” She offered a purse-lipped, curt nod in return.
The officer continued, “Mr. Allen is currently in the back of a cruiser, clad in a bee-keeper’s suit. He’s enroute to the state hospital for a 72 hour hold. From what we can gather, Mr. Allen, in his deluded state, thought he forgot to fill the gas tanks last week, leaving his family starving to death since they couldn’t drive to the grocery store.” He gazed at his shiny black boots for a moment and said with a slight grin, “He told us he was confessing to being an awful father and husband. And was making it right with his dead family by purchasing Takis Churro Charge Chips and Mountain Dew, consuming the junk in honor of their memory.”
Joe and I shared a knowing look and rolled our eyes. The massacre was over, the bathtub juice was safe and sound, and Geoffrey was exactly where he belonged: at the intersection of batshit and crazy.
————
Jill Williams is a Midwestern transplant to Georgia with a penchant for exiting moving cars before they reach a full stop. Her prose has appeared or is forthcoming in Expat Press, Bristol Noir, Bull Lit, Close to the Bone, and Horror Sleaze Trash. When she isn’t drafting transgressive fiction, she finds a ridiculous amount of pleasure in the mechanical violence of county fair tractor pulls.