Mama Killed A Man

“John, come with me?”

“Just a sec, Amber.”

“John!”

He didn’t even look up. Maybe if he had, he would’ve seen the red, pulsing panic that wet my eyes and dried my lips.

“Oh leave the guy alone, Amber, he’s busy. We’ll only be a minute.”

I couldn’t look at him. I didn’t need to look; his rough smirk was implanted behind my eyes. My insides trembled as he took me by the arm and pushed me slowly, inconspicuously, down the stairs to my room. My room underneath the house, where no one could hear me.

“Well, apart from the mess,” he chuckled, “I think it turned out pretty nice, don’t you think?”
I nodded, stumbling into the sofa as he let go of my wrist. Boisterous chuckles and animated chatter filtered down the stairs in a cacophonic wave.

“Your mother was a messy one too, you know. She called it organised chaos.”

I shrugged. I could feel his gaze burning the back of my head.

“Amber, are you alright?”

I told him I was fine. He reached for my arm and I unconsciously snatched it away, leaving his hand grappling at the air.

“You don’t look fine,” he observed. I felt his eyes look me up and down. “Take a seat.”

I obeyed, knees buckling against the cushions. The sofa sank down three inches as he took the space next to me, placing a large, clumsy hand on my knee. His fingers were calloused and loose skin wrinkled around the knobbly joints. They looked like little tree trunks.

“Your mother,” he said with a gentle sigh, drumming his fingers against my knee. “Your mother was a remarkable woman.”

I nodded, but it didn’t mean that I agreed. It was the only movement I was capable of making. I had never felt so hopeless in my life.

“And if there’s one person that loved her more than you, it’s me.”

I looked at him then. I didn’t mean to. He caught me off guard, and suddenly my neck was snapping up and my eyes were locked with his. His heavily spirited breath washed over my face and I breathed it all in, tasting its every element; the salt and the lime and the tequila.

I would’ve wretched, but my bile had frozen over. Everything had frozen over.

“I can feel her in you, Amberlyn.” He nodded, licking his wet lips. “She’s in here,” he reached out and grasped at the soft flesh above my heart.

“Let me go,” I snapped hoarsely, “Please.”

He didn’t let go. Instead, he leaned forward and pressed his lips to my temple.

“Please!”

“I let go once,” he hissed. Flecks of hot spit misted the fine hairs on my neck. “I’m not letting go again.”

“You’re insane,” I trembled, swinging my legs up and scooting backwards on the couch. His grip tightened on my breast and I kicked out, striking him hard in the stomach. He puffed out his diaphragm, gasping for cold air, and I flipped onto my front, wrenching my chest from his fervent grasp.

I tried to scream, but it wouldn’t come. My mouth was open, my teeth were bared, my eyes were tearing furiously, but no sound would come. I felt his tree trunk fingers claw and wrap around my ankle; he pulled me back and flipped me over with ease, thrusting his weight against my torso and pinning me down. I could feel the contours of his muscles as they flexed against my struggles.

“You’re just like your fucking mother, aren’t you?” He breathed, clutching a fistful of my hair. A pathetic whimper escaped my lips, and he flinched, as though the sound had scorched him.

Then came the crash and suddenly, he slumped. His eyes rolled back and his face fell straight onto mine and I couldn’t breathe, he was crushing my lungs and I couldn’t breathe. My face was stinging and my eyes were scrunched shut and my pulse was pounding through my ears and my chest and my face.

Then it all stopped.

There was a short tingly feeling as the blood dispersed around my body and when I opened my eyes, little sparkly stars flitted across my vision.

“I told you I’d be down in a sec,” John panted.

I sat up, dazed. Tiny crystals of glass fell from my hair and littered the sofa around me. Karl’s body was lying haphazardly on the floor, head poised at an uncomfortable angle against the table leg. A jagged crimson cut slashed his pink scalp with its dark droplets pooling at the floor. I brought a hand to my face and felt the bloody spray smear across my cheek. John was standing on the other side of the sofa, a broken lamp in his hand.

He nudged Karl’s body with the toe of his Converse “Fuck!” his eyes grew wide, “Oh God, I killed him!”

That snapped me out of it.

Heart plunging, I dropped to my knees and cautiously placed the pads of my index and middle fingers against Karl’s neck. The pressure was met by a steady pulse, and I released a breath I hadn’t realised I’d been holding.

“John, it’s ok,” I said quietly, standing up and going to his side.

“Are you sure?”

I nodded.

“Fuck!” he said, exhaling sharply, “That fucking bastard! He had himself all over you and he was going to-” he stopped. “I don’t even want to think about it.” He put his arms around me, pulling me close.

Karl thought he was in love with my mother. Ever since my father pulled her onto their tour bus, ever since he caught that first glimpse of chestnut hair and strawberry lips, he was infatuated. He never thought they would last. He thought my father would leave her, break her heart, and then it would be his turn. Karl thought he could swoop in, sing her a song and win her heart. He didn’t once think it would be my mother that would do the leaving, or the heart-breaking.

But then again, neither did I.

I don’t think anyone expected it, and that was just my mother. She kept you expecting and expecting only to do something completely unexpected.

It had been forty-five minutes when Uncle Matt finally let my father back in the room, and he was still shaking. His eyes were wild, his nostrils flared and his cheeks were the colour of Arizona.

“Six feet under and Karla can still start a ruckus, eh boys?” Karl smirked from the other side of the kitchen. Dried blood flaked down his face and he held a towel packed tightly with ice to his bandaged head. The whole left side of his face was swollen from where Dad had punched him.

“Shut your fucking mouth!” My father yelled. He looked around frantically before picking up an apple from the fruit bowl and hurling it in Karl’s direction. It missed, knocking a pot plant from the windowsill which Mark swiftly caught.

“Hey, man, that’s enough now,” Steve said gently, reaching out and grasping my father’s shoulder in a steadying clutch. He grunted and turned away, storming back into the other room.

“Karla, Karla, Karla...” Karl muttered, gaze raised to the heavens, “What have you done?”

“Shut up, Karl,” Mark snapped.

“No,” his reply was blunt. “This is all because of her, isn’t it?”

“Karl-”

“First she goes off with my best friend, then she leaves us all to-“

“That is enough!” Louise bellowed, stamping her foot furiously against the tiles. “John, get
Amber out of here please.”

John took my hand but I didn’t move. A big part of me wanted to hear what Karl was saying. It was the same part that yearned to know my mother, the real her. It wanted to know Karla Cross, the heart-breaker, the renegade, the girl that dropped out of high school and drove a Harley and hitch-hiked her way through forty-five states and got pregnant at eighteen.

“Amber, sweetie,” I turned and wandered over like a moth to the flame. “That hobble your Pop is stuck with, the one that ended his career- the one that ended Skol. You know how that happened?”

“Enough!” Louise was panting now, exhausted by her own anger.

I frowned, ignoring John’s tugging grasp. “He got into an accident while he was touring Australia,” I answered, but it came out as a question.

Karl chuckled, a deep rumbling sound from the pit of his belly; it lured me closer.

“Oh, Amberlyn,” he smiled, “What your mother did was no accident.”