Mommy Monster

Chapter II

II 

Jim had dropped his son and his daughter off at his mother’s before returning home because he hadn’t been able to sleep at night lately. In fact, he hadn’t slept for the last three nights straight.

Jim’s children, Sandra and Michael, had been having some trouble sleeping too, but not for the same reasons. They had been having some really bad nightmares over the last couple of months from sleeping in the house where so many awful things had happened to them in the months prior. The screaming, the hitting, the breaking of glass. His mother, Therese, convinced Jim that it would be best to bring them over to her house to spend a few days where they could feel safe. Where they wouldn’t be subjected to the blood stains on the living room carpet and the cardboard tacked up on some of the windows. Where the edge of the nightmare that had been their life could wear off some.

Not that it wasn’t safe at home. Their mother, Barbara, had been locked up for a few months now. She avoided trial by pleading guilty to a lesser charge of reckless endangerment, battery, and child neglect. Attempted murder was on the table, as well as assault with a deadly weapon, but the prosecution didn’t want to push their luck considering the peculiarity of a man being battered by his wife. That just wasn’t a believable story in Brisbane, a small community in Idaho where men were supposed to be men, and women were supposed to do whatever they were told. It was amazing that this type of attitude still existed in the 21st century, but it did, and it was not about to change in rural Idaho.

So, they took the deal. Jim knew it was better that Barbara should spend a few years in jail, than for them to run the risk of her being released on a verdict of innocence, or even worse, released on her own recognizance before she stood trial. At least the kids would be able to feel safe for a few years.

After the most recent attack, Jim spent a couple of weeks in the hospital recovering from his near fatal wounds, and the children were placed in the custody of the state because of the threat that Barbara posed. It was a nightmare for the past year and a half living with Barbara and trying to protect his children. But it was over now. At least that was what Jim came to depend on. It was finally over.

Jim and Barbara moved into their cozy Tudor almost 2 years ago. Jim worked as an engineer and was transferred back to Brisbane, Idaho, with RenTech, the company he worked for. It was either take this promotion and return to the place of his childhood nightmares, or be stuck in Des Moines working in the same old position until the end of time, with no promise for advancement. Against his better judgment, he took the promotion. Barbara ran a home-based business selling whatever she could on the many internet auction sites, and she had good connections in Brisbane, so she was easily swayed.

Life was good for the first six months or so. Barbara seemed happy and her violent outbursts seemed to all but disappear. That was, until Jim had his accident.

He was coming home from work one rain-filled evening. The storm dropped more than 2 inches by the time he left work. As he entered the interstate heading home, an oblivious driver slipped into his lane and clipped the front end of his Audi, sending it into a 360 degree skid on the wet pavement. The car, narrowly missed a number of semi-trucks in its skid to the other side of the interstate, slammed into the median and proceeded to grind its front end against the cement divider. With screeching metal and sparks flying, it came to rest some 200 feet from where it was first clipped. Even though the air bags didn’t deploy, Jim was unscathed. The car, however, was another story.

The radiator was hissing steam. From where Jim sat, he could see that most of the front end was damaged. The engine had stopped running. One of the front lights that was illuminating the yellow median that stopped the car’s progress was swinging back and forth, casting an eerie glow to the dark, wet night.