Short Story - NICE TO SEE YOU AGAIN
The prompt is: “Two siblings see each other again after a long time.”
So, me being me, we have tags - but i’m going to list them as SPOILERS this time and stick them at the bottom. Otherwise it spoils the story, lol. (Lame)
500 words, here we go!
Nice To See You Again
“Well, when she’s dead, we’re going to have to talk about these things,” Stella says. Her brother still has the uncanny talent of pissing her off, even after all they’ve been through.
He presses his palms together in supplication. “I’ve been in a car for at least fifteen hours, can we just not right now?”
“Stephen.” She says his name like it’s a threat, crossing her arms and tapping her foot, giving him the look she patented when she was twelve and he was eight.
Throwing his hands in the air, he tosses himself in her comfy hammock chair. It swings him like the world’s biggest baby as he sulks. “I get the house,” he grunts. When Stella raises a finger, he cuts her off. “I’ve done the dirty work most of our lives, and I’m doing the dirty work now. Complain and you can handle this by yourself.” He stabs a toe at the ground, rocking himself with his eyebrows up, daring her to challenge him. She won’t. He’s as right as pounding rain.
“Fine.” She plops down on the puffy chair beside him. “What else do you want?”
His chin tips side to side as his thoughts tilt inward. “I want her wedding ring. That damn thing embedded itself in my face often enough I’d like to think I earned it.”
“Does that mean I get the boots that kicked my ass?”
“Nah. Not your size.”
“She’s always had monster feet.”
“All the better to kick you with,” he says.
They share a comfortable smile, one only sibling who share dark family secrets can.
“Sucks that I haven’t hung out with you in years,” Stephen says, stretching with grunting sounds and a disturbing number of pops.
“Well, we knew we wouldn’t see each other much before the big occasion.”
“Estranged siblings.” He says it with a grin. They’d always planned to get together before mom died, and here they are – right date, right time, right frame of mind.
“You’ve been plying her with the pain pills, right?”
“Oh, yeah. Woman feels nothing from the brain down. I almost envy her. People in town think she’s trash, though. They’re not wrong but it puts her in a pissy mood every time she goes grocery shopping.”
“Didn’t you offer to do it for her?”
“No way. Putting myself in a position where she annoyed me would only make me murder suspect number one when she finally croaks.” The macabre never looked so good on him, his grin easy and malicious.
Getting up, Stella dusts off her backside and goes to her drawer, slipping out the fentanyl she got with a little creativity and a lot of courage. They’re little white pills of sanity. With these, there’ll be no more acid calls from the hag who raised them, no more nightmares. She shakes the orange prescription bottle with a childish smirk on her face.
“You ready?” she asks.
“Since I was born,” her brother agrees. “It’s time to put mama out of her misery.”
SPOILERS
Premeditated murder
References to drug abuse / drug overdose
