ThursThreads, week 284

The glare on my wife’s face grew deeper as she thumbed off her phone and turned to me. “That was Citibank.”

“I told you I was going to get a few things.”

“A few things?”

“I needed a new dress for Joan’s wedding.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And we wanted new linens.”

“They didn’t call about a dress and some linens, Lanie.”

“There was also the negligee I got you – you know, that one you saw at Vickie’s. Though that’s kinda for me too.”

She just stared at me.

“Okay. There were a few other…things…I found on the internet.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Did they flag the one from Romania? Or Tibet?”

“Both.”

“How about the one from Peru? He’s the biggest one.”

“The biggest what? What did you buy, Lanie? Exotic pets?”

“No. Well, kind of. I mean, they’re not really pets.”

“Lanie!”

It was my turn to be quiet.

“What. Did. You. Buy?”

“Dragons.”

“Dragons.”

“Well, dragon eggs. Unless they hatched en route.”

“Dragon eggs, unless they hatched. You spent how much on these?”

“They’re real, I swear! The sellers got great Yelp reviews and everything. Wanna see the websites?”

“No, I don’t want to see the websites. What I want you do to is call and cancel the purchases. All of them. Well, not the dress. Joan is my sister.”

“I can’t. They’re getting delivered tonight.”

“They’re going to deliver us rocks, Lanie.”

“Unless they hatched!”

“I can’t understand how you could be so fool…what’s that noise?”

Outside, there was a roar.

ThursThreads, week 283

The air was sickly sweet from too many flowers, too much perfume, and whatever the hell they used in places like this to keep people thinking about rotting flesh. People had been filing past Timothy for hours, a never-ending stream of kids from school and crying family members and gawkers hoping to get a glimpse of this month’s celebrity-a-la-newscasts. They didn’t know what to think of me, sitting alive while he was dead. There should have been two coffins lined up next to each other, their eyes said to me. How could you have escaped when he didn’t? Weren’t you supposed to protect him?

I didn’t give a fuck.

They hadn’t been in that cabin. They hadn’t been lashed to the floor with ropes and fed pills that made the room sway like the cabin of a ship in a hurricane and raped for hours and days. They hadn’t been asked the same question over and over and over until they said everything they could think of in order to make it stop stop stop.

I realized I was clenching my hands so hard my fingernails had drawn blood. God, I was so mad at Timothy. He knew where Dad had kept the money. I didn’t. He’d spied on Dad, once, and seen the key. I begged him to tell them. Begged him to give in and save us. But he wouldn’t. He just smiled, and he never talked.

I was glad he was dead.