Aftershock & Others Read Online Free Page B

Not personally. Marion was an innocent bystander caught in the crossfire between her mother and father. Louise was to blame. Because it was Louise I wanted to hurt. Louise of the bleached-out eyes and hair, Louise the ice princess who gave birth to a bleached-out clone of herself and then made her body incapable of bearing any more children. So where was my son—my dark-eyed, dark-haired counterpoint to Marion?
    Eight years of Louise’s mocking looks, of using the child who appeared to be all of her and none of me as a symbol of my failures—in business, in marriage, in fatherhood, in life. When autumn came I knew it had to stop. I couldn’t stand the thought of another winter sealed in that house with Louise and her miniature clone. I wanted to leave, but not without hurting Louise. Not without an eight-year payback.
    And the way to hurt Louise most was to take Marion from her.
    And I did. Forever. In a way she’ll never forget.
    We’re even, Louise.
     
    (suck…puff)
    “And you think your wife is behind these horrific pranks?” Dr. Hurst says, leaning back in his chair and chewing on his pipe stem.
    I envy that pipe. But I’m the supposedly suicidal prisoner and he’s the prison shrink, so he gets to draw warm, aromatic smoke from the stem and I get pieces of Marion on my food tray.
    “Of course she is. Louise was always a vindictive sort. Somehow she’s gotten to the kitchen help and the guards and convinced them to do a Gaslight number on me. She hates me. She wants to push me over the edge.”
    ( suck…puff )
    “Let’s think about this,” he says. “Your wife certainly has reason to hate you, to want to hurt you, to want to get even with you. But this conspiracy you’ve cooked up is rather farfetched, don’t you think? Focus on what you’re saying: Your wife has arranged with members of the prison staff to place pieces of your dismembered daughter in the food they serve you. Would she do something like that with her daughter’s remains?”
    “Yes. She’d do anything to get back at me. She probably thinks it’s poetic justice or some such nonsense.”
    ( suck…puff )
    “Mmmmm. Tell me again what, um, parts of Marion you’ve found in your food.”
    I think back, mentally cataloging the nastiness I’ve been subjected to.
    “It started with the baked potatoes. They almost fooled me with the first one. They’d taken some of Marion’s skin and molded it into an oblong hollow shape, then filled it with baked potato. I’ve got to hand it to them—it looked quite realistic. I almost ate it.”
    Across his desk from me, Dr. Hurst coughs.
    ( suck…puff )
    “How did you feel about that?”
    “Disgusted, of course. And angry too. I’m willing to pay for what I did. I’ve never denied doing it. But I don’t think I should be subjected to mental torture. Since that first dinner it’s been a continual stream of body parts. Potato after potato encased in Marion’s skin, her fingers and toes amid the French fries, a thick slice of calf’s liver that didn’t come from any calf, baby back ribs that were never near a pig, loops of intestine supposed to pass at breakfast as link sausage, a chunk of Jell-O with one of her vertebrae inside. And just last night, her eyes in a bowl of grapes. The list goes on and on. I want it stopped.”
    ( suck…puff )
    “Yes…” he says after a pause. “Yes, of course you do. And I’ll see to it that it is stopped. Immediately. I’ll have the warden launch a full investigation of the kitchen staff.”
    “Thank you. It’s good to know there’s at least one person here I can count on.”
    ( suck…puff )
    “But tell me, Mich. What have you done with all these parts of Marion’s body you’ve been getting in your food? Where have you put them?”
    A chill comes over me. Have I been wrong to think I could trust Dr. Hurst? Has he been toying with me, leading me down the garden path to this bear trap of a question? Or is it a trap? Isn’t it a perfectly natural