SNUFF

Starting Fresh

My mother sat on the edge of my bed and stared blankly at the wall. She was at a loss, I could tell. I could also tell she was angry with me and maybe also with herself. She was the controlling type – the type of person who spirals when they no longer have control and as she sat in silence, I feared that this was the beginning of that.

"Mom?" I said, sitting next to her. "What are we going to do?"

"Destroy those tapes." My mother finally broke the silence. "I'll take care of the rest." Without another word, my mother rose from my bed and walked out of the room, closing the door behind her as she left. A few moments later the front door opened and closed, and the sound of the Buick's engine started and slowly faded away. I stood in the middle of my room and looked over at the TV which still had the Allen's tape paused on screen. Destroy the tapes, it was simple enough. I could easily destroy them. I walked over the TV and popped out the VHS and held it in my hands. I stroked the cover label with my thumb and closed my eyes. Was I trying to make myself remember with these? They were, after all, the movies in which I would often watch – classics from my own collection of movies. Did I choose horror on purpose? Was there a connection between the movies and the murders I had committed? I could not know for sure, but deep down I was unwilling to destroy the tapes. I wanted to understand the person in the tapes. I wanted to understand myself.

*****

Hours had passed and finally nearing two in the morning, I heard my mother return from what I assumed was her trip to the Allen's home. I went down the steps two at a time and met her in the kitchen as she washed her hands at the sink.

"So?" Was all I could say, and she turned to me. Her pale blue eyes were rimmed with black circles and for the first time since after my father left, she looked scared.

"I took care of them. Every. Single. One." She reached out to me and grabbed me with her wet hands by the elbow and ushered me to sit with her at the table.

"What does that mean? You disposed of the bodies?"

"Yes. I cleaned up everything as much as I could. I parked up the road, went into the bushes behind the houses and entered through their back porch. Their children were there – starving – crying for attention. I had to take care of them too. I'll need you to help me with one last thing though, you need to dig... did you destroy the tapes?" My mother put a trembling hand on mine.

"You took care of the children? What did you..." I tried but couldn't find the word to finish my sentence.

"They had to be killed, Jeremy. Don't you understand?" She spoke nonchalantly like it was the only option she had. They were young – unable to understand why mommy and daddy weren't coming to answer their cries.

"They're only children! One is an infant and the other is barely old enough to speak!" I shouted, frustrated with my mother and her choices "Why would you kill them? They're innocent!" I stood up from my chair with such force that it fell back against the white tiles of the kitchen floor.

"The women I murdered – there was a reason, I'm sure of it. But the children, even in the state I was in, I never killed them because I recognize true innocence!" The anger inside began to boil, "You stupid – stupid – CUNT." The words flew out of my mouth before I could even acknowledge them, and I watched as my mother looked at me with shock and then disgust. I had never insulted my mother to such a degree and before I could calmly apologize, she laid a hard slap across my left cheek. I stepped back fuming with rage, forgetting the chair that had fallen behind me and crashed to the floor. My mother laughed, an ugly laugh, the kind of laugh a bully would make when seeing their victim strewn to nothing.

"Need I remind you what I have done for you?" She pointed a bony finger at me. "Now get up off the floor and help me grab the bags from the car. You have some digging to do." Enraged, I grabbed a hold of her finger and bent it towards the back of her hand. She shrieked in pain and I held on to her finger as I folded my legs underneath me and boosted myself up. I bent her finger back once more, she called out in pain again and stepped back. I mimicked her steps, keeping a hold of her now broken finger and she raised her left arm to slap me once more. I stopped her hand as she raised it and rushed her into the kitchen wall, not caring that the garbage bin was in the way. She fell into the bin, screaming for me to "stop at this instant" and rather than stop, I pulled her back out and threw her to the floor, hitting her head on the countertop as she went down. Groaning, she began to crawl forward, blood pouring from the fresh wound on her forehead and I grabbed her by the ankles, spun her around on the floors and straddled her.

"You've turned me into this. You are the monster." I spat into her face and placed my hands around her neck. "I can do better. I will do better – but first, you must pay for killing the innocent." I squeezed my hands around her throat as hard as I could muster. She tried to pry my hands away from her, scratching at me and but her frail old hands and one broken finger made it impossible to get out of my grip. I raised her head and brought it close to my face. "You're a miserable old cunt, I've dreamt of this day." With one last hoorah, I slammed my fist down onto kitchen floor and my mother's head hit with a hard crack. I let go of her throat and watched as the blood poured from the back of her skull. Her eyes were open, staring – and even in death, they held the same blankness they always had.

*****

I neatly folded my clothes into the only duffel bag I owned. It was prize from a magazine contest I entered when I was a young boy. I wasn't bringing much with me, there was no use for that, I would buy new clothes wherever I ended up. With the money I had saved up from working at the video store since I was sixteen, I wouldn't need to worry about that – at least not for now.

Once my clothes and few special belongings were packed into the duffel bad, I grabbed my backpack, still containing the three tapes I had never actually disposed of, and a couple other items like my mother's perfume and one of her favourite nightgowns. I would memorialize them to remember her by. I threw it over my shoulder and proceeded to the car. I had managed to clean up my mother's body and rested her in her bed as her final resting place. For an hour, I held her hand and cried softly into her neck, wishing things had gone another way, but there was no other way. It had to end like this. I rose from her bed, grabbed the blanket and tucked it under her chin. Her pillow was damp with blood as her wounded skull still bled little by little. I gave her a kiss on her forehead and closed her bedroom door for the last time. I looked around the house one final time, trying not to forget anything I would need before my departure. It was spotless, I had done a good job cleaning, but I couldn't stay here any longer – I had other things to do.

Upon entering my mother's old Buick, the stench of the Gemma and Terry's rotting flesh flooded my nostrils, despite their parts being triple bagged. I gagged at the smell, but it was a reminder of what I needed to take care of before embarking on a new journey. I rode in silence for five miles outside of the town's limits, to a backroad my father had once taken me on as a young boy. I drove until the dead end, got out, grabbed two of the seven bags in the backseat and my shovel, and trekked out into the middle of the woods until I was certain I was far enough. I buried the bags, returning three times to my car to finish bringing the rest of the Allen family to their graves. After five hours of shoveling and hiking through the woods, I returned to my car, covered in dirt and sweat. This is the last time consciously or subconsciously I will be doing this, I thought.

I headed up the dead-end road, back towards the highway, with all the windows rolled down, enjoying the fresh smell of a spring morning for the first time in a long time. I took in a deep breath and closed my eyes for just a moment, feeling liberated. Although liberation came at the price of my first kill, Abby Gibson, Cindy Lawson, Margaret Stutt, The Allen's and my own mother, I finally felt like I was at peace. From the moment I laid those children to rest in their graves, I vowed to myself that I would never kill again. I would never, not even subconsciously, do it ever again. The tapes were going to remind me of the person I once was. I was going to move on from this and become a better person, a person "on the straight and narrow" as they say.

A fresh start was what I needed. I can't change my past, but I could mold my future and my future held great things, I could feel it. I just need to keep reminding myself that I will do better; I will be better.

The End.