On the sixth Daze of Christmas
Robb White reminds me of the importance of Karma this holiday season.
Robb White reminds me of the importance of Karma this holiday season.
Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth by Robb T. White
“Go fuck
yourself, motherfucker!”
That was my
Mom’s Christmas greeting back to me when I called to wish her Happy Holidays. For
the record, I didn’t. Fuck her, that is, in case you were taking my old lady’s
name-calling to heart.
That was
then. This was now. I planned to kill the bitch.
What reason,
you ask, could make a son so depraved he’d want to kill the very mother who
shit him out into the world? Because the drunken slut stole my fucking lottery
ticket and cashed it in, that’s why. My goddamned numbers on my goddamned
ticket stolen from my wallet. The cash payout was $100,000 ($71,000 after
taxes—but fuck it, still plenty left over—all the money I needed to blow this
armpit of a town).
I confronted
her as soon as I discovered the ticket missing. One look at the fingertip
bruises on her triceps and the cops dragged me away while she looked on from
her balcony, smoking a cigarette. She filed a restraining order. I got jammed
with six months in county.
I’m
homeless, jobless, poor as a shithouse mouse, scouring the parking lot for cigarette
butts just to calm my nerves.
For weeks, I
watched at a distance while my thieving mother went through my winnings. I
followed her from one shopping mall and pricey restaurant to another. I
chain-smoked and slept in my car. I had one problem to solve—namely, my
mother’s death would point the arrow of guilt in only one direction.
The witch
herself provided the answer. Like the biblical dog returning to its vomit,
Jezebel went looking for stray cock in the same redneck bars with her tight
skirt and duct-taped tits spilling out of her blouse.
I followed
her to the Royal Flush, a cement-block dump and parked far in back. She’d come
rolling out at closing time with her latest stud, some bearded bike trash or
cheating husband.
The fool she
came staggering out the door with at closing time would do—big, tattooed, a gut
the size of a Ben Franklin stove around his middle.
I followed
his Silverado a mile away to a lovers’ lane. I’d had blowjobs there from my own
pickups from that same dive.
The windows
were fogged up from whatever was going on inside when I ripped the driver’s
door open. His eyes were squeezed shut,
his head back against the seat while my mother’s head bobbed up and down in
front of his crotch. I jammed the stun gun in the flab of his neck.
Perfect
timing. He shot his wad just then and my mother’s mouth opened, dribbling jizz
to her chin, eyes glazed from drink and sex. I let her focus on my face: recognition
lit the dim bulb of her brain. Before she could scream, I jammed the gun under
her exposed right tit and held it there, sparking and sizzling. I’d bought that
pink stun gun for her last Christmas.
Rigging up
the hose from the muffler was a few seconds’ work. Ignition on, the suicide
note tossed on the dashboard, I fled the scene, cracked open a beer to
celebrate, and fell asleep. Until the cops pounded on my windshield with their
batons.
During the
six months in the calaboose practicing her childish handwriting on toilet
tissue, mastering every loop and curlicue, she had changed her handwriting to
block printing. Worse yet, she left a letter with the bartender at the Royal
Flush that night stating if anything happened to her, I was to blame.
I accepted
an Alford plea rather than go to trial and take a chance on life without
parole. Twenty-five years, out in fifteen, my lawyer says. The money left over
went to the women’s shelter. Who’d have
thought my old lady with her GED would ever quote Shakespeare? “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to
have a thankless child.”
I’m a son of a bitch, all right.
