Suburbia - ch. 2

"Jimmy, get down here, it's time for dinner!" A loud obnoxious jolly voice demanded.
"I'm coming!"

Jimmy's slender body slithers through his room like a ballerina on ice. He weaves to and fro the mangled heaps of dirty clothes and half finished model airplanes and closes the door behind him as he exits into the hallway.

He hears his mother's voice. She too was anxious to eat apparently.

Jimmy rolls his eyes and yells, "I'm coming!"

It hadn't been a minute since his father called him down. What was the hurry and couldn't they just start without him? It's not as if they hadn't done so in the past when father worked
extensive hours and mother paced back and forth assuming he was having an affair. This was no different to Jimmy.

He pounds his feet down the stairs to the dining room where the lighting was a mild yellow from a chandelier with terrible bulbs in the glass frame. It was gaudy, that's what father said about it.
Beautiful like angels was always mother's reply.

The chairs were made of a cherry wood and glossed in a deep wood finished to preserve the intricate details of each carving running down the legs of the chairs to eagle talons clutching orbs. The showcase of precious china was always looking in the opposite corner of room and Jimmy often wondered why they never used it. Why have dishware that wouldn't ever be used. It makes very little sense, Jimmy would think to himself.

Mother is carrying a giant pan of something covered and sweating with steam. She was wearing her pink fluffy iron mittens today with that bluebonnet flower white apron that father got her last Christmas. Her hair was tied back and she still wore her make-up from this morning. She often performs charity work at the school and at the local church. She says that it's her release from the house.

Dad thinks she's having an affair with the minister, so does everyone else in town. He is just too afraid to admit it or to seek the right question. Maybe he's simply afraid of the answer. Ignorance is bliss he always liked to say. The town's motto "Welcome to Ignorance, America."
"How was your day at school, son?" Father asked Jimmy while he was scooping peas from the bowl already on the table. Mother removed the steel iron cover and revealed a massive hip of ham, roasted generously in its own fat and mixed with seasoning Jimmy couldn't place.

Father smiled just long enough to watch his son leap over the table and kick the large ham off the plate towards the floor for the dogs. Jimmy's father smiled something confusing and scared just before blood poured from his throat while gagging on the thickness of his own tongue.

The young boy was digging deeper into his father's throat while cursing at the dying man with a cold eagerness, "Die! Just go on and die!" Mother fell out of her seat and as she frantically grabbed air on the way down her plate of mashed potatoes flipped over and into her lap. Gravy stains were always so difficult to get out of silk and she would have thought of that if not for the stains of blood on the carpet from her husband.

Mother gets up and tries to pry her lunatic off of her dead lover but Jimmy had latched into the corpse like a Vietnamese leech. She screams in pain as she feels a white searing pain burn the side of her head. She claws at the young boy who was biting into the flesh above her breasts, a fork driven into her neck and blood showered over the two like Old Faithful.

She rolls her eyes into the back of her skull, her flesh turning blue and clammy. Her pigment turns pink to white to red as she is drenched in her own blood. She raises his arm weakly as if to climb her way up to her feet but instead she pulls down the table cloth, plates of food showers down on her. Her final breath came to her like the sound of a hairball out of a domestic cat. She didn't have much to say after that.

"I'm fine, Dad," Jimmy smiles innocently to his father while receiving the plate of mashed potatoes from his mother, "I had a long day but I finished my homework."

There wasn't much discussion afterwards. Jimmy was fishing for a compliment but his parents quickly went on to other discussions. Jimmy finished his food quickly and he said very little during the family discussion. His parents were in their world of politics and economics. Things Jimmy could care less about at his tender innocent age. He was focused on his plate and tried his best to get his mind cleared from the savage and bloody day dream he just had. He was afraid that he enjoyed the images he had dreamed a little too much. His favorite color was red after all.

"May I be excused?" Jimmy asked. His parents allowed him and then they continued with their ever so important discussions and ignored their child for the rest of the night. For Jimmy this is common.