Nov
Dining Car Revenge
by Boxie Carr
Lightening lights the valley, split by curving train tracks, below Shepherd’s Hill. I stand smoldering in cold fusion rage against the eastward wind’s icy mist, waiting, waiting for my mother’s return from her dyke’s, Big Easy, voodoo queen, hurricane drunkenness. A smoke signal puff appears through my brass spyglass. Mother is trying to shame-slink home to my Toccoa Falls, Georgia sanctuary.
The thunder’s competition with the waterfall roars blood-chills my starless darkness. Mother will soon know how cremation revenge is served in the dining car. Our past mother and daughter fights were beyond ordinary family squabbles. It was not about wanting permission to date boys, while she spouted lesbo-feminist propaganda.
Why do I need to murder her? Lawyers call my motive, discovery of evidence, but I call it dead woman riding to her just flambé.
Did I seek the police? Yes. They laughed at me after interviewing mother. Oh, she must have lied to them with the same artful deceit that had kept me in the dark for my first twenty-seven years. I pictured her calm blue eyes batting as the grieving widow of my deceased father. Mother is a sociopath smarter than a light detector’s needled sensitivities. Her soulless manipulations probably caused straight ink lines while profaning her alibi of being in child labor at the time of father’s death.
I believed her lies until obtaining his surgical release approved in her handwriting. Mother has to pay for her crimes. I’m her judge, sentencer and executioner. Sadly, she’ll never see the guided reaper coming for her.
The train whistle sounded across canyon walls as if the War Between the States had Zeus as our glorious general. Opening the camouflaged, metal box, I remove and harness on the heavy metal-jacketed cylinder as instructed. The painful weight on my shoulders wouldn’t be forever. This stinger guided missile launcher opens a lighted scope view for me to the approaching train. They call this vehicle bringing mother home historical and I call it digitally doomed. An adjustment to night vision, target search with computer engagement toggled on, target locked on. Closer, closer, almost, not yet is going through my mind when father appears in front of me. I’d know him anywhere.
Do I believe in ghosts? I didn’t but do now. Before me floats my father all cream and transparent, interfering in my mission. I tell him I am revenging his murder before he tells me he committed suicide, so mother and I could live in peace from his falseness.
“Is there a hell?” I ask hoping my mother will soon be flayed, screaming in torturous red- hot coals.
“Your mother did not murder me. She did her best to protect you from my failures.”
“I don’t believe you father. Get out of my way.“
“Stop, please. Mother loves you.”
I pull the trigger with a guiltless smile. The missile flashes through father’s filmy vapor finding her train which explodes in a fireball. Mother wouldn’t be coming home.
An evil, talented tale told between creative writing. All in all, proper and insane.
Loved it.
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorched from a demented daughter. I loved the flash followed by a revenge served cold last sentence. “The Devil Went Down To Georgia”, but he was one upped in terms of evil.
Superb!
Everybody’s wanted to ‘off’ someone at some time in their lives. Happily, very very few actually carry out the deed.
I understand wanting to ‘off’ someone in a spectacular fashion (heck, or to do ANYTHING on the big stage in a spectacular fashion) … and in my mind’s eye this was a spectacular deed. But it was sooo impersonal. An assassin this chick was not. A mass murderer she WAS. I enjoyed the story tho, I wonder what happened to poor Daddy’s ghost…and where the killer got the Stinger.
Perhaps Father Ghost was made hole-ly. Perhaps the daughter bought the murder weapon over the counter without a gun check. My own daughter, Mike, asked me to refer you to Mathew 10:35. I don’t think Matthew had this in mind when referring to the end times, but daughters often disagree with their mothers about what the term, “The Last Train” means.
I wanted to tell the author of this story that I confidently had this story as my number 6 pick overall in the contest. Thank you for offering your writing to us.
Rufia Solitaire: Thank you for typing this Mommy. I love my Mommy, wish to be a writer like her & was just taking out my frustrations. Sometimes I act like a little girl, am a bit slow to learn, but want to grow up, because I want a baby of my own. My biological clock is loud as a girl kitty in heat. Mommy says I can’t just pick out the man of my choice, have him marry me & have his baby. I don’t understand why not, so we have mother-daughter arguments frequently. I don’t understand why my Daddy is a ghost either. Mommy, myself and one other woman saw him at a party thrown by Uncle Thorny, so we know he is real. I hope all of you enjoyed my evil story, but I would never hurt Mommy, anyone or even a choo-choo train. Bye.