Broken Families



A handful of children ran about on the yard, laughing and throwing snowballs at one another. They were rather cute doing so, brought a smile to my face whether I would admit that in the presence of another person or not. For whatever reason, smilers are shunned in this society. One of the kids has dark brown hair and wears a shabby green coat with dirty trousers. Every day, winter and summer, he wears those same clothes. The other kids don't notice anything unusual about him as far as I can tell, but if a boy that age never changes, that's a sign of something going on at home.



Being the responsible adult I am, one day I followed him once after all the other kids were gone. He stays longer than anyone else, just sits in the swing and kicks the snow. Sometimes he sobs quietly, that day included. Eventually he gets up and shambles off into the alley beheind my house, between it and the old daycare centre where I used to take my kids back when they still needed someone else to look after them when I was busy. Now they were already in school, getting good grades just like their daddy back in the day; They really were taking after me, and I was proud of them.



Sometimes it amazed me how much my son in particular reminded me of myself when I was nearing my teens, trying hard to get girls to like me but failing miserably by being one of the nice guys. He was just like that, and I comforted him, told him it would get better, and I was speaking from experience. My daughter, on the other hand, she practiced some unusual behaviour. One night a couple of months back, I heard her get out of bed at 4 AM and into the hallway that connected her room and mine – she was the age when she still needed to sleep with a parent once in a while – and started humming. I got up and told her it wasn't the time for that, that she should go back to sleep, but she didn't respond, and I realised she was sleepwalking. I guided her back to bed without waking her, but she repeated the same in the early hours of morning before returning to bed on her own.



I was lost in my thoughts for the most part of following that sad little guy, because he walked real slow. A couple of times, I thought he'd stop to take a leak in the trash cans or something. Would anyone have seen me, they'd probably have mistaken me for a perverted creep, going after a little boy like that. Thankfully no one was around and that awkward situation could be avoided, but it did cross my mind several times and drove me quite paranoid once or twice. I wasn't the type to interact with kids who my son and daughter didn't know, although I know some parents are into that kind of thing. Helping all children equally and such. Nice people, but that's just not for me. This was an exception because my kids shouldn't have to put up with the bad parenting of their friend.



Finally, he got home. The house was in a better part of town than mine, which definitely startled me as there was no way a couple of negligient fuckheads lived there. It was the house of someone with a lot of money and probably influential jobs, maybe lawyers or judges, but I couldn't really rule out anything with a high income. Hell, they could've just won the lottery. Most people in this area were getting paid more monthly than I got each year, but it didn't really bother me so long as they didn't act arrogant about it; My best friend lived just a couple of blocks down the road, so a judgemental attitude wouldn't exactly be appropriate.



Their house had white wooden walls and a gabled roof, painted red, with two storeys and yellow curtains on all the windows. The porch was neat with a small lawn surrounding it next to a shared garden with the neighbours, clearly indicating a warm relationship between them. I couldn't believe my eyes, it was all so unlike what I had expected. There were even a dozen of garden gnomes standing about like the useless decorations they are, smiling at passer-bys. Vined flowers hung in pots above all the other plants in this beautiful nurtured slice of land.



The kid stopped at the road, looked right and left like his parents had taught him. I followed as he crossed the street, sliced his throat wide open and let his small body fall on the grass. I nodded at the gnomes and smiled before heading inside, holding my bloodied hand in front of me as I treaded forward, dragging the dying boy behind me with the other. They had no carpets, only a laminated plywood floor. He was bleeding all over it. It would certainly make a nasty thud were someone to fall head-first against it and slide across the rooms. That brought a new smile on my face.



Before I knew it, there were two dead adults in the living room, lying face-down on the floor with trails of blood leading up to them. My friends nod their heads and smiled. I smiled, too, and went upstairs. I had heard the screams from there while slamming the married couple all over their house and kicking them around. Nice background music. I hoped no neighbour heard it, but I was willing to take that risk.



<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">She fought back but stood no chance against my shining flesh. My friends liked to watch silently, endlessly smiling. They were happy. I had fun knowing they had fun, and when I was done, they nod their heads again as a sign of approval. She was too young for my taste but the watchers liked them young. Who was I to argue against their compelling silence? It had to be done to please them, and the physical aspect of it did feel good. I would be a liar to claim otherwise. No, it felt great. No pleasure came close to this, the wax from my candle dripping inside her and boiling through bone and skin alike, penetrating into her very core!

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<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm">They smiled at me in perfect unison and I smiled at them, returning outside to the lawn where I hid behind a bush until nightfall. Next morning, police were swarming on the property, more than one of them vomiting upon witnessing the butchered family. I stood waiting and smiled at every single cop that walked past. Some looked straight at me, but they suspected nothing. Another success. My colleagues smiled at me again, this time no longer friendly. It was the smile of love and I knew that from this moment onward until the day I die, I would never say one more word.