RETURN TO SNAKELAND - Twenty-Fourth Fragment

* This is a fictionalized account of some shit that actually happened. All the names, locations, etc. have been changed to protect the innocent as well as the guilty. – JG *

-Jason. Wake up.-

I sit up, still dreaming, my wife asleep at my side. They are arrayed at the foot of our bed, the women sitting, the men standing behind them. They are five in number, a little family – although I remember later that only three of them are actually related. The older woman, the Mother, sits to my right, covered in blood from what appear to be innumerable stab wounds. Underneath the blood her dress is plain, her face even plainer. The older man, the Father, and a young teenage boy stand together behind her, the older man’s hand placed awkwardly on his Son’s shoulder. The boy, kind of punk-rock, kind of skater-ish, is also bleeding but less so than his Mother. Fewer stab wounds are visible. The Father appears nearly untouched but for the blood seeping forward into the front of his work shirt – all of his stab wounds were in his back.

Marge Janks sighs loudly. –So, we’re next, then. Perhaps you’ll tell everyone about what terrible parents we were.-

-I didn’t even know you. I’m just trying to make sense of something that has been bugging me off and on for the last 25 years. Why it all happened. Why it all happened then.-

Marge scowls. –I blame that terrible music he listened to. Who knows what kind of messages were hidden in that.-

Mark Janks guffaws. –That’s just stupid, Mom. I listened to much worse and I never killed anybody.-

I tilt my head. –He’s right. He didn’t.-

John Janks lightly touches his wife’s shoulder. –We may...never know. If we did things right, if we did things wrong...who can say.-

I raise my eyebrows. –I can say. Unless there was more we don’t know about, some...secret abuse all of you committed, you didn’t deserve what Jeremy did to you three.-

They don’t say anything more. I start feeling a little guilty about what I wrote before, about how they should’ve seen it coming. Nobody sees it coming. Not ever.