What We Forgot to Bury

by Marin Montgomery

In a frenzy, I pull every reminder of us off the wall and shove every framed photograph into a box, which I toss into a heap in the garage. My anger intensifies by the minute.

Signs of yandere.

diamond baguettes.

Get To check it

“We were drunk, Noah and I. We had been out on the town, and since Lauren was staying with us, I didn’t think it was an issue to tell them to go back to the house while I made sure a friend got home safely. I’ve known them both since college, and I trusted them together until I walked in on them in bed together.”

Quite an incident.

“My dad died of natural causes, and my mom died in a car accident when I was a small child.”

Inconsistent lie.

“It’s always better to have someone owe you a favor, especially when it’s an enemy.”

If only she knew...

Ravaging each other is our own attempt at redemption and forgiveness.

From a virgin's perspective, I can only call it guilt reliever sex.

mono, the kissing disease?

Gotta check up on that.

“Look at us, babe. You live with a foster mom in a tiny apartment with three, sometimes four, other people. You don’t even have your own bedroom. I live in a makeshift frat house where they deal weed.”

Not a good outlook,eh!

Staring out of the smudged window, I think about my father’s temper, my first recollection. I’d been spanked and slapped for sure, but this time his violence toward grown women took on a new meaning.

I guess this time it hurts on the dignity.

My father turns his bleary stare on me. “Do you know what fucking is, Elizabeth?”

Truly, anger is some strange form of recklessness.

Naive, I ask my mom, “Is that what you do when the guy comes to the house and you make funny noises?” After spearing a now-cold pea, I choke it down.

WOW! The consequence of getting it correctly.

“I thought the toilet didn’t work.”

You just couldn't let it pass, you petty thief.

“Do you want any light?” A sharp nod of her head answers my question. “Just the fire.”

The outcome of this is not black and white, open and shut, and that’s what’s scaring me.

Of course. Thinking that way woud be more in the scale of Remedios Custodio.

“We can, but there’s one strange thing that’s not adding up. It’s registered to a Jonathan Randall. Except Jonathan Randall is a convicted felon in prison.” He says this like I wouldn’t know. I wait for it. “And when we did some searching, we found ties to you.”

“Some people just aren’t cut out to be parents.”

For example, me.

“I can’t forgive him. And if I ever see his daughter, I’ll tell her the same thing. He deserves to rot in hell. And for any demon seed he had, she’s probably just as broken and worthless as him.”

When I click on the list of web pages, it goes from screaming to an all-out, full-throttle roar. Charlotte’s history is a combination of articles on how to kidnap pregnant women and how to cut a fetus out of the female body, stories about women who have kidnapped pregnant women and cut the babies from the womb, and other grotesque articles on how to remove a fetus from the mother. Some are for when the mother is alive, some when she is dead.

OMG!

“Lauren told me about the gift you sent to the house,” he grunts. “The jumbo box of pregnancy tests with a note that said, ‘Keep trying, don’t give up.’”

So, this is what they call rubbing salt on the wound.

Laconically, Noah admits, “It was me, that night. Not Jonathan.”

An eerie echo of Dio Brando.