He yearns for that sweet triumph. He can even hear the soaring and
emotional music that will accompany it.
He turns away from Charlotte’s side of the room, goes to his younger
daughter’s neat bed.
Emily. The pixie. She will never give him any trouble. She is the
good daughter.
He will hold her on his lap and read to her from storybooks. He will
take her to the zoo, and her little hand will be lost in his.
He will buy her popcorn at the movies, and they will sit side by side in
the darkness, laughing at the latest Disney animated feature.
Her big dark eyes will adore him.
Sweet Emily. Dear Emily.
Almost reverently, he pulls back the chenille bedspread. The blanket.
The top sheet. He stares at the bottom sheet on which she slept last
night, and the pillows on which her delicate head rested.
His heart swells with affection, tenderness.
He puts one hand against the sheet, slides it back and forth, back and
forth, feeling the fabric on which her young body has so recently lain.
Every night he will tuck her into bed. She will press her small mouth
to his cheek, such warm little kisses, and her breath will have the
sweet peppermint aroma of toothpaste.
He bends down to smell the sheets.
“Emily,” he says softly.
Oh, how he longs to be her father and to look into those dark yet limpid
eyes, those huge and adoring eyes.
With a sigh, he returns to Charlotte’s side of the room. He drops the
silver-framed photograph of his family on her bed, and he studies the
kept creatures housed on the bookless bookshelves.
Some of the wild things watch him.
He begins with the gerbil. When he unlatches the door and reaches into
its cage, the timid creature cowers in a far corner, paralyzed with
fear, sensing his intent. He seizes it, withdraws it from the cage.
Although it tries to squirm free, he grips its body firmly in his right
hand, its head in his left, and wrenches sharply, snapping its neck. A
brittle, dry sound. Its cry is shrill but brief.
He throws the dead gerbil on the brightly colored bedspread.
This will be the beginning of Charlotte’s discipline.
She will hate him for it. But only for a while.
Eventually she will realize that these are unsuitable pets for a little
girl. Symbols of evil. Reptiles, rodents, beetles. The sort of
creatures witches use as their familiars, to communicate between them
and Satan.
He has learned all about witches’ familiars from horror movies.
If there was a cat in the house he would kill it as well, without
hesitation, because sometimes they are cute and innocent, just cats and
nothing more, but sometimes they are the very spawn of Hell. By ,
inviting such creatures into your home, you risk inviting the devil
himself.
One day Charlotte will understand. And be grateful.
Eventually she will love him.
They will all love him.
He will be a good husband and father.
Much smaller than the gerbil, the frightened mouse quivers in his fist,
its tail hanging below his clenched fingers, only its head protruding
above. It empties its bladder. He grimaces at the warm dampness and,
in disgust, squeezes with all his strength, crushing the life out of the
filthy little beast.
He tosses it onto the bed beside the dead gerbil.
The harmless garden snake in the glass terrarium makes no effort to
slither away from him. He holds it by the tail and snaps it as if it is
a whip, snaps it again, then lashes it hard against the wall, again, and
a third time. When he dangles it before his face, it is entirely limp,
and he sees that its skull is crushed.
He coils it next to the gerbil and the mouse.
The beetle and the turtle make satisfying crunching sounds when he
stomps them under the heel of his shoe. He arranges their oozing
remains on the bedspread.
Only the lizard escapes him. When he slides the lid partway off its
terrarium and reaches in for it, the chameleon scampers up his arm,
quicker than the eye, and leaps off his shoulder. He spins around,