Filed to story: Return of the Reaper Story
“Let us go see his father-in-law and see what we might learn.”
“You are so smart, dear one,” Karp said, reaching across the counter to give his partner a tender slap.
Nestor touched the streak of mustard on the bigger man’s cheek.
They finished their sandwiches and left for the house in Twickenham.
Isaac filled a cart at a Walmart in Corinth, Mississippi.
He bought clothes for Merry that she helped pick out. Shirts, underwear, socks, jeans and a heavier winter coat. Also a pair of boots and a sweater she “just had to have.” A new toothbrush, a bottle of Flintstones, a comb and some coloring books and crayons. A selection of her favorite breakfast cereals went into the cart. She had enough changes of clothes to last a week without laundering.
He paid with cash and the elderly woman at the register remarked that “someone is a very lucky little girl.”
“And it’s not even my birthday.” Merry beamed.
They ate at a Subway before getting back on the highway south towards Tupelo.
Isaac took a trio of pills from a plastic carrying case he kept in his pocket. He popped them in his mouth and swallowed with a sip of raspberry ice tea.
“Are you still sick?” Merry said.
“I’m not sick,” he said.
“Granpa says you are. He say you take pills because you’re sick.”
“These pills? They’re like vitamins for my brain. I don’t take them because I’m sick. I take them to make me think better.”
“I’d like to think better.”
“You think just fine, honey.”
“Does your friend know we’re coming?” Merry said, stabbing a straw into the ice for a last sip of punch at the bottom of the paper cup.
“He doesn’t know.”
“You should call him. We don’t want to be rude.”
“He doesn’t have a phone, Merryberry.”
She knitted her brows. No phone? Unthinkable. Everyone had a phone.
“Why not, Daddy?”
“Well, his wife and him live way out in the woods away from the world. They like it that way.”
“Why’s that?”
“My friend says he’s seen everything in the world he wants to see. He headed back into the trees and built himself a cabin there.”
“So, us coming to see him is a surprise?” she said.
“Something like that,” Isaac said.
Merry was silent for a while, stabbing at the ice in her drink cup with her straw.
“Daddy?” she said after a bit.
“Yes, honey?”
“You promised to take me to Disneyworld.”
“Well, I can’t do that right now.”
“It’s okay,” she said. It was the opposite of okay but she wanted him to know she was going to be brave about it. It was also important that he know just howbrave she was being. She slumped back into the booth as he gathered their sandwich papers to clear the table.
“Merry,” he said standing and holding her coat out to her.
“Yes?” she said, being sovery brave but not looking him in the face.
“Last time I was at my friend’s I saw wild ponies in the woods.”
She snatched the coat from his hand and was heading for the store exit in her new boots. He trotted after.
Disneyworld?
Never heard of the place.
Dr. Roth heard the doorbell ring but chose to ignore it to finish his morning shave. He was patting his cheeks with cucumber infused witch hazel when he heard Marcia call his name. Her voice quavered like the time she found the garden snake under the water heater.
Dressed only in a bath towel tied around his waist he stepped to the top of the stairs. Down in the foyer Marcia stood between two men who were dressed in dark leather coats. One of them had Marcia in a chokehold. A gloved fist held a curved knife against his wife’s side and angled to go up under her bottom rib. Jordan’s vision was drawn to the tattoo on the man’s neck. A grinning human skull smoking a cigarette.
The smaller of the two men, a young man with a baby face and hair to his shoulders, began to climb the stairs toward Jordan.
Jordan moved away down the hallway seeking options as he ran. The towel slipped down to his ankles tripping him. The doctor was back on his feet and sprinting for the end of the hall.
He owned no firearms. He’d read a study that proved that a gun in the home was 67% more likely to be used as a murder weapon than in an incident of home defense. The only phones, landlines, were downstairs in his office and the kitchen. A Danish study posited that cell and cordless phones significantly increased the risk of brain cancers. The Roths did not have an alarm system of any kind because Jordan saw it as a waste of funds as they’d spent so much to buy a home in a safe neighborhood.
Dr. Roth took the only alternative that remained for his continued survival.