“No Affection”

 It shouldn’t have surprised me when my mother sent me into the apartment complex to murder Mrs. Jameson. She had always done her best, as far back as I can recall, making my life difficult. When I was only four years old, my mother taught me to smuggle liquor and cigarettes under my shirt at convenience stores. She had forced me to bind my dog’s feet, douse him with gasoline, set him alight, and then watch as he burned to death. He was suffocated by the fumes from his smoking body. The image is still singed into the back of my mind  as clearly as the day that it happened.

I suppose that all that I had ever wanted was my mother’s love and affection. I hung on her every word. My aching heart yearned for even the tiniest scrap of praise. A single, “Good job, Jason.” or “I love you, Jason.” Or perhaps even an “I’m so proud of you!” would have given my life meaning.  However, I now know that I was pining for something that I would never receive.

Naïve as I was on that rainy afternoon, I carefully prepared to accomplish the task appointed me, ignoring the shouts from my conscience against my actions. I carefully packed my bag with the necessities: a hunting knife, a roll of duct tape, gloves, and a ski mask. It wasn’t much, but it would at the very least keep my identity hidden, silence the woman’s cries for help and screams of agony, and ultimately end her life with several simple stabs.

Somehow, my mother had managed to acquire the key to the apartment in preparation for the event. I crept over the door mat, gingerly pushed the front door closed behind me, and secured the dead bolt so that she would be unable to run.

There she lay, resting on the sofa in the miniature living space of her one-bedroom apartment. I silently pulled the ski mask and gloves from my bag and slipped them on. Slowly, I tip-toed through the shadows of the darkened room, careful so as not to bump into anything that might block my direct path.