Compunction

The tears in Boyd's eyes crystallized into heavy weights as he glared at his aunt across the closed casket. His grief found new purpose in the rage that threatened to simmer over at the sight of her red eyes. How dare she cry! How dare she stand there and lie about how she loved his mother. Love is patient, love is kind, love doesn't murder you like Desdemona had Lilith. There was no proof, but Boyd didn't need proof, he knew what the investigator's had said. Lilith had lost her battle with depression and overdosed on muscle relaxers and gone to bed. Boyd knew better, those muscle relaxers may have been his mother's but she never used them. His aunt did. His mother had depression, but she wasn't suicidal, she was on her medication and hadn't given any indication of suicide when she had said goodnight. Yes, thought Boyd, Aunt Desi is going to pay. Maybe not today, but one day.
Coming home to the darkened house after the reading of his mother's will Boyd felt numb. Five million dollars. All the money his mother had received from the settlement from the accident that had crippled her when he was just a boy, was now his. He wished he could pay a necromancer with the millions, instead of his aunt, as executive of his mother's estate, squandering it like she had her own money before his mothers passing.
"Thank God, we'll be moving soon!" Desdemona huffed, slouching onto the ripped and worn green couch. "I don't think I'll sleep a wink until we do. I wonder if this old fire trap will be on T.V. once the house flippers get through with it?"
The force of her weight flopping down showered them both in a cloud of dust. Coughing and spluttering, Boyd backed away from the seat tripping as he did over the boxes of his mother's prized possessions. An urn fell out of the top one, spilling dirt from a long dead plant. Rolling to a stop at Desdemona's feet. With a sneer, the offending object was kicked halfway across the room.
"Pick up your brother, Boyd, and throw that junk away while you're at it. I never did understand your mother's memorializing of a fetus."
Picking up the urn, Boyd launched it with all the strength of a star highschool baseball pitcher at the back of his aunt's head. How dare she ridicule his mother after stealing her from him! A resounding crack and a dull dissatisfying clatter as the soil heavy head of his aunt hit the tile floor together with the urn.
"Get up." His order was followed by silence, the kind of silence that makes a boy wonder. Stomping around the couch, he slipped in something slick. Cursing more than his mother would've allowed, Boyd stood up and continued on undeterred. Aunt Desdemona never cleaned, and his mother could barely get out of bed most days, so it wasn't a surprise the floor was a mess. Aunt Desi was always too busy wasting her money at the casinos to care if the family was living in squalor. Too bad for her, Boyd thought. I'm not going to give up Mom's money without a fight!
Nudging his Aunt's crumpled form with his dirty sneakers, Boyd demanded she stand once again. Growling in irritation at her continuous disregard, he reached down and yanked her braid: gagging when it came away in a sopping matted mess of jagged bone and spongy tissue. Dead. Aunt Desi is dead and I, I killed her; murdered her like she murdered Mom! Boyd's mind screamed at him: to call the police, to call the ambulance, to do something! Taking his phone out he had begun to dial 911 when his eyes caught sight of the urn mere inches from the couch. Letting his gaze drift back to the corpse in front of him, his finger hovering over the green call button, Boyd's panic began to shift into a gruesome sort of satisfaction. After all, his mother always said what you give is what you get. It was Aunt Desi's own fault. Had she not murdered his mother -or at the very least not insulted her and his brother's memory- she would still be alive. It wasn't murder, not really. No, this had been justice, plain and simple. The law had failed to make restitution so he had gotten retribution.
The moon hid from the shadowed souls below as Boyd lugged the heavy bundle towards the burn pit. The family hadn't used it for several years, but Boyd still remembered how to do it safely. The night was still, and the drought that had plagued the state for several years had finally ended the past spring. Perfect conditions to burn, really. It took longer than Boyd had expected. T.V. always made it look so quick, yet it was nearly noon by the time Boyd's bundle was completely reduced to ash. Mostly because of how incredibly hot the fire constantly needed to be to hasten the process. Getting it just right had taken time to figure out, and then there was finding what would fuel the flames best with as little smoke as possible. Finally, sweat covered and exhausted, Boyd left the now dead fire pit to cool in favor of a shower and a nap. The movers wouldn't arrive until the following day so he didn't really have to worry, there was still time to scatter the ashes around the house before his father came to take him out of state. Desdemona would only be missed by the debt collectors who'd eventually give up, but his mother would live on in his heart forever.
"It is common knowledge that there is no night as dark as the shadowed souls of mankind. Such shadowed souls rarely bask in the glorious light of redemption, choosing instead to wallow in the murky depths of retribution. Two wrongs do not make a right, but three can be paraded as one should the circumstances allow,"
"Mona, don't you think that's a bit morbid to read Lilli to sleep. What happened to 'The Little Princess'? That was such a nice story." Boyd chanced a glance in the rearview mirror at the scarred face of his beloved wife, leaning against the carseat of their six year old daughter.
"Oh, Boyd, we finished that weeks ago! You know Lilli, she's a goth at heart. Besides, I read 'Dracula' with my Dad when I was four. A few sleepless nights are worth it."
Shaking his head, Boyd refocused on the road ahead of them. The high beams of the family van did very little to illuminate the eerie gloom of the autumn night. After the house fire that crippled Lilli and permanently disfigured Mona, the family had decided to use the disaster as a much needed fresh start. Packing up what few possessions had been left unscathed, They'd headed out of state. Mona had picked out a house online, and using the insurance money and what little money that he had left from his mother Boyd had bought it, free and clear. Sight unseen. Mona had insisted on keeping it a surprise. Going so far as to put the directions on her phone so he couldn't look up the address and see it ahead of time.
"Turn left at Compunction Junction. The house is going to be on the right hand side, in a mile or so,"
Something about the street name began to nag at Boyd. A memory of something just out of reach. Perhaps, it was being back in the state he had spent his childhood in after twenty years or the fact that they had been driving for three days straight with repetitive street names, Boyd wasn't sure. It wasn't until the family began to ascend the creaking porch steps that Boyd recalled why that name sounded so familiar. Pushing the door open Boyd hoisted the still sleeping Lilli higher up as he took in the family house. It had obviously been renovated sometime after its erection. The interior, while a bit dated by modern standards, was much too modern to be considered original to the gothic exterior of the farmhouse. Dust covered every inch of the space. Speaking to years of neglect, a likely reason for the steep price cut Mona had bragged about snatching up.
"Oh, gosh, I'm glad the movers won't be here soon!" Mona threw back the dust cloth from the relatively new looking green couch. Clouds of dust had them both coughing deeply. "I don't think I'll be able to sleep until they get here with all this cleaning to do!" Mona grinned up at him, her mouth twisted with the pulling of her scars. "It's almost as bad as some of those house cleaning shows we stream."
Boyd nodded, stepping back and stumbling a bit under the weight of the body he carried. The swirling dust seemed to settle in Mona's soil and crimson highlighted hair turning it an ashen hew.
"Dust to dust. Ashes to ashes. I wonder whose relative that was."