The Honeymoon is Over: Parts III & IV

—3—

Playing stupid had been hard for Dan. Now that they had decided to kill Alexander, he struggled to keep sarcasm and accusation from his voice, and malicious smirks from his face as they mulled-about fixing breakfast.

The girls were quiet, darting their eyes about while they ate their cereal, refusing Alex's offer of eggs, bacon, and English muffins with inarticulate stuttering grunts. They almost relented, when he showed them some of the jams he'd brought special for them from their trip, but held firm in the end. Daniel was proud of them.

He did not expect to see much of Elizabeth. She typically spent all her allotted time before catching the bus fixing her hair, putting on make-up, picking out her outfit. She even made her bed and organized her space. Then, with only a minute or two to spare, she would come sweeping through the kitchen, grabbing up something or other with basic nutritional value, and devour it on the way to the bus stop. Her purse was a virtual convenience store, complete with snacks, a fully stocked make-up bag, two kinds of brushes, nail kit, dental floss, tooth brush and tooth paste. She'd hit the girl's bathroom on the second floor just outside her homeroom and be pretty as a picture, ready to flash her pearly whites at every boy worth admiring before first bell. It was impressive in a don't try this at home kind of way. He knew this, because the ten month span between their birthdays fell at just the right interval to leave them in the same grade. People usually assumed them twins and failed to get the picture when she or Dan would correct with "No, just Irish twins."

Alexander had come down alone this morning. Fresh wounds on his face and arms, the only parts visible, belied tales of honeymoon moped injuries, and stiffened Dan's resolve.

Dan was pleased that his mother wasn't just cowering and taking it, like before. There was no hunkering down and covering sensitive areas until the beating faded with her attacker’s spent energy; she was fighting back. This might prove advantageous if she were ever to discover that Alexander's death was not an accident.

Alex had tried to stop the bleeding on his cheek with toilet paper, like he'd told Dan to do the first time he'd shown Dan how to use a razor, but the gouges on his left arm had required more extensive care; four streaks were seeping through his gauze wrap. The bruises Alex had returned home with had begun fading, but he was sporting some new ones. His perfect olive complexion now looked like a lame Pollack of sick yellowish green overlaid with grayish purple, powder blue, and enraged specks of red.

Alex tried to act cheery, like he used to, but his general unkempt appearance, mussed hair, hollow-eyed sleeplessness, and battered visage made such gestures ironic, almost comical, like a back alley street bum caked in filth and decked out in rotted clothes offering in the King's English to fix a spot of tea for everyone. Dan knew the look of hangover all too well, and this man, bedraggled and disoriented, had been up late drinking and raging about.

"Where's my Mom?" Dan asked, straining to sound casual.

The look on Alex's face suggested that he'd not prepared a lie ahead of time. He stammered, "Uh, well, umm, She's, um, sleeping in this morning. I tried to wake her but I guess the accident has just really taken it out of her."

The girls exchanged suspicious glances.

"Can I go up and see her?" Dan asked. The girls twittered like baby sparrows expressing a desire to attend Dan on his mission.

Alex looked down guiltily and ran his fingers through his hair, returning it to a semblance of decency, then said, "I don't think that's a good idea. I locked the door so she could get her rest. You kids can see her when you get back from school. I'm sure she'll be up and about by then."

He always locked the bedroom door. Dan wasn't sure if his Mother had the second key that came with the lock, since she'd spent most of her time in the bedroom since returning, and he'd not seen her manage the door herself. But Alex managed the door enough for both of them. He seemed determined to take the full month off from his stores whether home or not, and as far as they could tell, spent his days sleeping on the couch, coming and going from the bedroom unlocking and relocking the door with each pass through it. He had tried to sound easy going about it, but had forbidden any of them from entering "their private space" what he called with jest "the Holy of Holies." He even entered and exited the room as if trying to keep air from escaping, leaving no chance for anyone else to even see in. He put on quite a sing-song show while at it. "How are you feeling, Dearest? Can I get you something?" and "I'm just going to be right out here if you need me, Darling." Such condescending tones suggested to Dan that she should be grateful for every blow and cherish every bruise, which last he'd seen had been many.

The key to the bedroom door had yet to be added to the larger collection of keys toted about in Alexander's left front pocket, residing unchangeably, thus far, in his right front pocket, even when he wore nothing but pajama bottoms and a white tee shirt. At its last appearance, the key still dangled from the thick beige tag and white string which had accompanied it when left for Alex by the departing contractor. Without it, or its twin, which he'd yet to see flashed about anywhere, he was uncertain how to check on his mother.

Uncertain that was until about a mile and a half from the house on the school bus. He was sitting with Elizabeth, who was visibly tired from their family meeting the night before, and was thinking alternately about his mother's predicament, their carefully developed plan for Alex, and Amy Tyndale's deliciously perfect rear which she kept parading about a foot or so from his face every time she sat up and leaned over the bus seat in front of her. Then, he got an idea.

He must have struck a strange pose when it occurred to him, because one of Amy's friends darted a disgusted look at him over the bus seat and whispered something into Amy's ear. This provoked Amy to turn her head and look back at him over her shoulder. Elizabeth defended Amy afterwards, claiming that Dan had leaned forward during his epiphany, and sat wild-eyed a mere inch or two from her bottom looking like he was going to take a lick, but true to form, she defended him in the moment.

Amy shot bolt upright and whirled on Dan, screaming, "You disgusting pervert!" over and over again, as she slapped at him, pelting his upraised arms with feeble blows.

Her friends started chanting sing-song, "Pervert Dan!" as one of the larger boys, a truly vile thug named Derek Cook, who actually would have taken a lick under the same circumstances, grabbed him by his shirt front, pulled him up from his seat and began shaking him violently. Amy's slaps finally made their mark and started pinging off his cheek or ear depending on where he was in Derek's agitating cycle.

With this, Elizabeth jumped up onto the bus seat and brought a hail of fists into Amy's beautiful face. Alex had been giving Elizabeth self-defense lessons (no daughter of his was going to be vulnerable to the whims of hormone crazed boys) and each of her five punches plunged destructively into Amy's nose or shocked mouth. After the fifth punch, Amy went down hard, dropping momentarily unconscious into the center isle of the bus. Elizabeth then turned her fury onto Derek's grinning mouth. Derek had been unaware of Elizabeth's actions, and seemed to have mistaken the frenzied chorus of screams and encouraging hoots as his own support group. Why he would imagine that people would shout, "CAT FIGHT!!!" about his inefficient rattling of Dan’s eye teeth was anyone's guess.

Elizabeth’s new onslaught was not as fruitful, however. Derek's face proved more substantial than Amy's and his pain threshold a might higher. She'd been forced to shoot her fisted missiles arching around Dan's whirling skull to get at Derek, and Dan’s head struck her in the mouth on one of its many journeys in her direction, popping the left side of her lower lip and spraying blood down her sweater and all over the cheering freshman sitting behind her and Dan.

Less than two minutes later, Dan and Derek found themselves on the side of the road. The bus driver had drawn, as was his custom, his own conclusions about the event, and ejected the two boys to prevent further collateral damage while they worked out their issues the old fashioned way. This would not be the end of the matter with the school, he was certain, and the battered girls' parents might wish to get the police involved, but that was none of his concern at the moment. He just needed to get these kids to school and those two girls to the nurse as soon as possible.

As he drove off, Elizabeth threw the emergency back door open, sending the alarm trilling, and hopped down into the street. She quickly chased down her brother, who was hurrying away with deliberation, as all the bus's back lights flashed on, and its tires screeched to another halt, slamming the swinging back door so hard that the top window crazed and fell apart.

After the amount of brooding they'd been doing at home since their mother had returned battered, bruised and broken from Europe, the exercise of the bus brawl picked up their spirits. Dan and Elizabeth laughed all the way home, re-counting their adventure, adding drama and detail as they went, describing not just the actions, but their impressions, and the proposed comical thoughts of the other participants.

Dan was sad to hear about Amy's face, which Elizabeth depicted in horrific terms—everything bloody and darkening with bruises, nose askew and crusted, lips swelling out of shape, and half her face vertically streaked from jaw line to forehead where the right side of her face had lain on the grooved rubber matting running up the bus isle. It was like hearing that someone had spray-painted a mustache and Goatee on the Mona Lisa. He was pleased, however, to be off the bus. He needed to go home to check on his mother; indeed, it had been his epiphany of how to do this, given the locked steel door, and unreachable key, which started the bus brawl in the first place.

Elizabeth was eager to help, in spite of her bruised and swelling right hand, and busted lip, but they needed to move fast before the call came from the school and they discovered just what it would take to turn Alexander's rage away from Mother and toward them. Alex was a proud man, and they were certain that this type of gossip fodder would not be good for his reputation. Before the weekend was out, his reputation would be of no use to him, but they had to live with him peacefully until then if they hoped to free themselves from his tyranny permanently.

—4—

They could have gotten out onto the garage roof through one of the side windows in the girls' room, but they dared not enter the house, lest Alexander hear them moving about. The weekend pattern suggested that he would spend much of the day on the couch sleeping, making frequent trips into the bedroom to check on their mother; for what, they did not know. He didn't keep her prisoner exactly, since he would escort her out of the bedroom to get her food throughout the day, and took her for a tottering and wincing amble around the circle on a couple of occasions.

His estate was set on an isolated piece of land amid a string of like properties stretched out on a three mile circular road attached to one of the more public streets by a half mile connector and a gated archway manned 24/7 by an armed security guard in a booth. Some creative soul had named these elite pathways Titleist Circle and Tee Lane.

Dan guessed that the upgrades made to the master bedroom, Alexander's Holy of Holies, had at least one silver lining, which he intended to exploit. Aluminum ladders were a sight noisier than he'd supposed when glorying in his epiphany, and he was certain someone in there would have heard the clatter if not for the rooms markedly improved sound proofing. He was also glad that Elizabeth had gotten off the bus. Injured hand or no, she proved a life savor in the complicated process of installing the ladder on the far side of the garage's hip roof away from the line of sight from anyone inside looking out.

They had a close call in the garage when angling the ladder out the door. Dan had lifted it over the Escalade to line up properly for a speedy exit, but had brought it down too soon, scaring the side of the monstrosity as if with a Skill Saw. He'd worried about the metallic screech, but Elizabeth went ballistic over the CSI evidence they were leaving behind. She was watching way too much TV these days.

There foolproof plan was getting more and more complicated with every stupid thing they did. Any investigation would bring up their recent bus brawl, and now they'd have to prepare lies about the side of the Escalade. The mouthed argument between them over this was more than a little heated, peppered with violent gesticulations, but nearly silent for all that.

Eventually they got the ladder into place, thankful, that they didn't have to raise the height of it, because the pulleys, ropes, and brackets seemed a tad confusing to both of them. Dan mounted the ladder and skedaddled to flatten himself against the second floor exterior rising above the garage roof.

He was shocked to discover at the first window, that in addition to exterior bars, Alexander had mounted interior steel rolling shutters. Since he only wanted to look, the bars were not a problem, but the shutters concealed all. As he crept passed to check the status of the second window, an electronic whirring and metallic clacking erupted from inside. The shutter rose rapidly and Dan threw himself against the exterior wall between the windows, his less than silent scrabble concealed, no doubt, by the clatter of the shutter. Mostly out of sight, he saw Alexander's face press against the glass, scanning the view.

He thought Alexander might have heard him, and held his breath until Alexander said, "There, Sweetie, the light will make you feel better, I'm sure." A muffled groan followed, and Alexander laughed, saying, "Come on, Sleepy-head, you need to get some breakfast. Are you okay to walk, or do you need some help."

Dan peeked in quickly just in time to see his mother slap Alexander's hands away as he reached to help her from the bed. You go Mom, Dan thought, as Alexander said, "You don't have to be that way. I told you I was sorry, I don't like this anymore than you do, but you've forced me into it." That was always the way. A man beats his wife and then, amid apology still manages to place the blame on the wife. His father had been a master. It's just that I love you so much and you keep pulling away from me or Why do you make me so mad, just do what I ask and this wouldn't happen or You know how I get when I drink, but you still push push push.

When Dan risked a peek, he saw them leave the room, pulling the door shut behind them. The locking mechanism was astonishing. It was a bar system that slid into heavy duty frames on each side of the door. There were also bars mounted top and bottom with their own locks so they could not be opened from within without the key and, when engaged, could not be opened from without at all.

Then he saw the rest of the room and tears flooded to his eyes and began spilling down in rivulets. The bed sheets and coverlet was blood streaked, as was the wall behind the wrought iron head board. The lamps beside the bed were smashed, the night stands clearly gouged beyond repair. Even more horrific, were manacles. The man actually had manacles. They would have looked like the kinky sex shop versions you see in comedies, prettily padded where they locked around the wrists and ankles, save for the fact that these didn't fasten to the head board in some playful fashion. Instead, they were thickly chained to the wall behind the head board and to the floor at the end of the foot board with metal plates sprouting large loops. They were fixed with lag bolts.

The room was a disaster. The bed had marked every surface it touched; there were gouges on the floor around every leg, and gouges on the wall for several inches around the head board, including above it.

Dan touched the glass of the window, and swore under his breath. This would not happen even one more night. They would not wait for the weekend. Tonight! Alexander Thanus would die tonight!

Continued in Parts V & VI.