Page 6 of Guy
“Just shut up about the Fraizer men.”He had to think about what it was he had heard about them lately that made him think that he didn’t want to fuck with them at all.Then he remembered.“They’re dogs, the lot of them.”She asked him what he meant, of course.“They can be dogs or something when they get pissed off.Tear your throat right out of you if they get pissed off enough, from what I heard.”
He believed it too.Once, when he’d been about ten years old, he’d seen his mom shift into a large tiger.She’d been bigger than the ones he’d seen in the zoo, not the week before, and was terrified of them.Margaret was going on about how their mom was a tiger and she’d never do that.He knew better.He’d seen her in action when someone tried to take one of them from her while out shopping.
“Besides, Mom is gone, thank goodness.I can’t believe that we got away with that twice in our lifetimes.”He wanted to pretend that he didn’t know what she was talking about, but didn’t want to get into it with her again.He walked into the kitchen to have some time to think.There was a great deal for him to think about, too.
They’d missed out on the insurance money because someone had called Amber and let her know about it.No matter how many times they tried to convince the policyholders that Amber was as dead as their parents, they wouldn’t believe it without a death certificate.Not only that, but when they put the ad in the paper for her to be notified, they’d have to go to all the trouble of stealing her newspapers for the time the ad was being run.It was a lot of work, and if she’d just not known about it for one more month, they would have gotten the money instead of her.As it was now, all they got was their childhood home and nothing more.There was very little money left over from what theirfather had left them, and Belinda leaving them the house didn’t mean as much if there was no way they could live in it for free.Taxes were due again, and they just didn’t have the money without the policy.Margaret followed him into the kitchen.
“I’m hungry.”So was he, but it did very little good because no one would bring them food anymore.Not even the dumbest of places like pizza.Though he was surely sick of pizza, it would have filled the void about right now.“What do you say you write another check to the bank and they cash it and we have ourselves some feast someplace?You have plenty of checks left.”
Another thing that he couldn’t make her understand was that just because there were checks that could be written, if there was no money to cover them, then you were more broke than before because of the bounced check fees.She either didn’t want to understand or couldn’t, but again, it got on his nerves.This time, he didn’t even bother with trying to explain.
“We’re going to have to sell some more stuff around here.”They’d about sold everything that was in the house, from their dining room table and chairs to the pocket watch that his father had left him.Why?No one knew why, he had a cell phone and didn’t need a watch that fit in your pockets.He was forever forgetting about it anyway.“How many more pocket watches do we have?”
“Four.And one that I got from mom when she was killed.”She could remember stuff like that, but nothing important.“You know, we should have gotten the policy because we had to go through all the trouble of killing her.The least she could have done was leave us some of the money that Dad had left her.And what about the money from Dad’s death?What happened to all of it?”
“We spent it poorly and now it’s all gone.”That was the truth.The first thing they’d got with the money was a new car each.Then they’d splurged on a cruise.And boy did they splurge on it.When they got back, there were taxes to pay, and they were nearly broke by the end of the first month.Two million dollars didn’t go as far as they thought it should have.“We should have put some of it to better use than to just spend it like we did.But it was fun.”
“Yeah, it was a blast.”Margaret sat down at the kitchen table, a table that he’d never eaten at in his entire life.That’s what the dining room was for.“We should go on another cruise.We can not spend as much as we did the first time, but just enough to have some fun.”
“We don’t have enough checks to cover that.”He wasn’t going to explain that having checks didn’t mean you had money again, so he changed the subject.“Tomorrow we’ll go and talk to Amber and see how much she’s going to give us of the money.Like we’ve been saying, they were more our parents than they were to her.She just had her dad, and we had them both.And why is Mom even leaving her any money in the first place?We’re her kids.”
Going up to his room, he was glad that he’d forbidden her from coming to it.She wasn’t allowed to knock on his door unless it was an emergency.And the house had better be on fire if she was going to disturb him.Laying out on his bed, the thought of all the things that he wished he’d known before.Like, millions of dollars wasn’t all that much in the long term of things, and that spending it like they had would net them nothing.They had nothing to show for the trip.They’d not purchased any souvenirs, nor had they taken all that many pictures.Wasted money, he thought, and now they didn’t even have the cars.
Last month, they’d had to sell the cars so that they could afford to have their bills paid.It sucked that there wasn’t anyone around who could have paid them for them.When their mom was alive, she always made sure that the power was on and that they had cable and internet.Now they only had internet because having all the channels was much too expensive right now.He knew what Mom would have said about that.She would have told them to get a job again.That was why they’d killed her in the first place, because she was ragging on them to get one so that she would not have to pay for everything that they needed as adults.
“Being an adult sucks.”As a teenager, he’d counted the days until he could be an adult.To be able to do what he wanted because he was old enough in the eyes of the law to make his own decisions.But right off the bat, he’d made the wrong decision about some things and had nearly ended up in jail.Then he realized that he had to be the adult for Margaret, too, or they’d be in worse trouble than theywere now.Shawn looked over at the desk that had all the final notices on it for their household.Some of them were behind as much as three months, and he saw no way to pay them.
He supposed that he could pay them like Margaret said, just write them checks, and that would be the end of it.Not really, but that wouldn’t work anyway; they no longer took his checks for bills because they bounced higher than he could jump.
At midnight, he got up and crept to the front door.He knew that Margaret would have gone to bed by nine-thirty.She was a creature of habit, and since they’d been little, that was their bedtime, and she would adhere to it.Going out into the cold of the night, he nearly went back inside as the wind picked up some of the snow and blew it onto him.But he had a job to do, and he needed to do it now.
He didn’t have a car to drive, so he walked the four miles to Amber’s home.Even in the darkened night, with all the snow surrounding it, the place looked good.She had planted some flowers in the spring that made him think that he’d love to have someone do that for their place.However, he only scoffed at the idea with his sister so she’d not think he’d gone soft in the head over a bunch of flowers that perked up the place better than their new car had done for their home.
Staying across the street from the place, he looked at the footprints in the snow and saw that there had been a lot of walking around her place to get the cameras put in.He could see the green lights making it known that the house was more secure than not.Shawn wanted to go across the street and rip them from the place, but he knew that would bring the police.The sign right there in the front made it clear to anyone going by that it would happen if tampered with.He was so depressed about it that he wanted to go home and go to bed and not get up.Things with Amber were getting more complicated daily, and he didn’t care for it.
“I’m so superior to her that it’s laughable that I’m in the situation that I’m in now.”It really wasn’t laughable, but it did make him want to cry.“She should be begging me to take the money from her rather than us having to go around stealing from her.”
He didn’t care for stealing at all.Oh, it had been fun at first.To take the things that she’d had simply because they could.But as things went on, the broker they became, it was necessary for them to survive all these years.Her having a job that paid her something was the only reason they would have any food for that night or not.
Some people would say that he needed to get a job.Well, he didn’t think he’d ever be that poor that he would need to find himself some employment.It was beneath him to have a job, and he didn’t want anyone telling him what to do daily, either.If he were to be found working at some menial job, it was because it was preferable to eating from a dumpster.And that was something that he’d never do in his life.There was movement at the house that drew his attention to the place.
“Shawn Gross.”He said his name like it was the awful way of spelling their name.He and Margaret pronounced it like Goss without the ‘r’.Shawn told the man that.“I don’t care if your name is douche canoe, what are you doing around my future wife’s home?”
“Future wife?Oh, I see.She gets a little money, and suddenly you want to marry her.”He knew that wasn’t true as soon as he said it.The Fraziers had money, and by looking at the man, he could tell that’s who he was.“What do you want with a woman like that when you can buy anyone you want.Hell, I’ll sell you my sister if that’s what you want.”
“Make up your mind.Am I broke or rich?I can’t be both.But whatever the reason that you’re talking about, she is going to be my wife soon.And right now, if you don’t back off from harassing her, I’m going to make you regret ever being born.”He sort of felt like that daily.“I can read your mind, Shawn.Why would you continue to steal from her when you feel bad about it?”
“I never said that I felt bad about stealing from her.But there are days when I feel like being born to this time isn’t what I would have wanted.”He had no idea why he was telling the man this, but it felt right.“We were stupid with our money, and now we’re broke.How about you give us a few million and I’ll leave Amber alone.”
“I don’t think so.”Of course not.Why would he help them?“When I marry her, and it will be sooner rather than later, you’ll be my half-brother-in-law.Or something like that.I’m hoping that wecan get along better than we’re seemingly getting along now.”
“You mean that I stop taking from her.I don’t think that’s going to happen.Not unless you can convince her to hand over her insurance from my mom.Mom wasn’t anything to Amber, yet she got all the money.”
“You got the bigger house and more money than she did when her own father died.Or did she?I can’t imagine that he’d leave his first little girl out in the cold like he did.He seemed like a good man.”Shawn snorted and said that he was a sap.“Is that why you killed him?Because he was a sap?Or did you have other reasons for being upset with him?Your mom, too.I know you killed her as well.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about.”Guy told him what he knew about the death of their mother.“You don’t—where are you getting that information?You’re just making up about how she was headed into the store instead of out.You don’t know anything about it.”
“I know that she wanted some ice cream that she’d forgotten to get, and you and your sister came up behind her and hit her with a baseball bat.How hard was it for you to swing it in the icy cold parking lot when you were just kids?I’m thinking you would have had to have some powerful feelings for you to have swung it that hard.Did she piss you off before leaving?”
