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Lying in
a pool of blood with the penis still inside her, Lacee smiled. She’d been doing
this for years, but this time, it was the best ever. She lazily thought of cleaning up and getting
home.
***
Lincoln
Jacobs considered himself a strong man but looking down at the decaying… lower
portion of a man had his stomach reeling. The body had been severed at hips and
mid-thigh. Gruesome enough, but it was the missing penis that sickened his men.
Three agents had already vomited.
“What do
you think, Linc?” Ken Mathers asked.
“Whoever
did this is one sick motherfucker.”
Chapter
One
Would
this shoot ever end? Lacee wanted to get home. She had errands to run before
picking her kids up from school. Then there was the Parent Teacher Association
meeting and the football game. There were times when Lacee felt the Parent
Teacher Association would suck her dry. There was always an event, a social,
always something that needed to be planned or attended, and always some type of
sale to help the school to earn money. It never ended.
Lacee had
worked with Sean for three years now. Some days she focused and enjoyed
shooting spreads for magazines. Others, like today, she'd rather be anywhere
but in front of his camera. She marveled at Sean's ability to handle her
distractions in stride. “Come on, Lacee, show me that smile. Flip your hair,”
Sean directed.
“Dinner,”
Lacee said.
“What are
you talking about?”
“Sorry,
Sean, I have so much to do tonight and we’re already two hours past our
scheduled time.” Frustrated, she pasted on a smile, wanting to get this over
with.
“If you
were here on time, we could have ended on time. What kept you, anyway? You
certainly looked rushed.”
“Just
things to do,” she snipped. “Let’s get this done.”
Lacee had
worked with Sean for almost five years, shortly after she had stopped runway
modeling he had discovered her locally. He was one of the better ones she had
worked with and she found herself often turning down other photographers. While
Sean had other models, he seemed to be her one and only these days. She was
lacking the patience for the others.
Another
hour of smiling, bending, turning, and fake breeze created by fans, saw their
work complete.
Lacee
rushed to get her kids from Angela’s house. Angela was a great friend and
always stepped up and helped out when she was needed. In addition, she could
handle Ben with a smile. They had met years ago when her oldest was in first
grade and had been friends since.
Had they
not been, she swore neither one of them would ever get Christmas shopping done
or work in a date night.
As she
zipped away from Angela’s, she realized the grocery store would have to wait
for another day. She’d just send Linc a text to grab some milk and beer on his
way home.
With the
kids in the truck and the radio blasting Luke Comb’s Hurricane, Lacee could
think.
She
needed to be more careful. Sean noticed. She had been off her game. Lacee had
not been her normal picture of perfection when she arrived for today’s shoot.
The need to better plan would be extremely important in the coming months.
With
winter approaching, there would be winds, snow, and potentially fallen branches
or trees in her path to and from the cabin. She needed to plan the timing
better. Create a contingency plan. Yes, Lacee needed to be much more careful,
at least until summer returned. Perhaps the cabin should be her summer hobby.
How she loved it. The cabin sat in the middle of nowhere. A beautiful stream
ran behind it, thick woods all around it, and so many wild animals. The quiet
was so calming, as though she were alone in the world with no one else to
bother her.
The cabin
had been her gift from her parents when she graduated college. Well, her
grandparent’s actually. They left it to her parents when they passed with the
direction it should go to her when she was old enough. Her parents used the
cabin as their way to get her to go to college. She wanted to be a model and
knew she’d be good at it. Telling her that her looks weren’t guaranteed
forever, her parents held the cabin she loved since she was a little girl over
her head until she stood on stage accepting her college degree.
She
wanted that cabin. No. She needed that cabin.
It was
like her grandparents understood her love of it. Although, the current reality
of what it meant to her had changed drastically from what it meant while she
was growing up. Had they known what she would use it for, as honest
church-going folks that showed kindness to everyone, they’d have burned it down
rather than leave it to her and her evil purposes.
Lacee’s
life consisted of parent meetings, volunteering at school and other social
events, chaperoning dances, modeling, and being a wife and mother. She needed
some place that was just hers. A place to breathe. A place that allowed her to
be who she was. A place that would forever keep her secrets.
“Okay,
kids, I have to get to a PTA meeting. I’ll pick up dinner from Faith’s Diner on
my way home. Be ready to go to the game when you hear me honk. We won’t have
much time to get there.”
“I better
not be late, Mom. You know I’m the cheerleading captain this year.” Always her
drama queen, Chloe worried about not being the most popular girl in school.
Lacee could relate. It was important. But at a slender yet strong five feet
nine inches at sixteen years old, with blonde hair and emerald green eyes, she
had very little competition.
“You
won’t be late. Check on Ben and make sure he’s cleaned up and ready to go,
too.” Her youngest, at six years old, a year into a diagnosis of Oppositional
Defiance Disorder (and several others such as Severe Emotional Disability), Ben
could really become challenging. They always tried to come up with new ways to
keep him happy.
Speeding
off to the PTA meeting, where she’d list the fundraisers for the year and ask
for more volunteers wasn’t what she wanted to be doing tonight. She needed a
break from daily life again. How long had it been? Five weeks?
Anything
over two weeks had become more difficult for her. But, she had to be careful.
Too much of any good thing could be bad. Or grow suspicious. If only she could
get her husband, Linc, to accept a bit more of the home responsibilities. It
would give her more time to focus on her own needs. However, that was next to
impossible, her husband had become so obsessed with work over the past few
years that she and the kids felt more like nuisances than family members. He
paid the bills and sometimes slept there. Well, that’s how it felt anyway.
Convinced
no one cared what she wanted or needed, she let out a huge sigh. All she’d been
for years now was a mother and wife. Not that she didn’t love her kids, because
she did. And she loved her husband as well. She couldn’t imagine life without
any of them. Well, in the interest of full disclosure, sometimes she did
envision stabbing her husband repeatedly, especially when he was in one of his
more inconsiderate moods. Lacee swore he thought a magic genie did his laundry,
kept the house clean, kept him fed, and made sure the bills were paid on time.
Genie?
Great. She’d indirectly called herself a fucking genie.
Arriving
at school, Lacee put on her cheerful mom face, made sure her shirt wasn’t
crinkled anywhere, and got out of her car. Inside the cafeteria, there were
donuts, soda, and bottled water. One of her neighbors oversaw the refreshments
for this meeting, finally one less thing for Lacee to have to do.
Quickly
Lacee called the meeting to order, assured no one wanted to be late for the
first football game of the season, and ran through the details.
“I know
no one wants to be late to the first game of the football season,” Lacee
professed as she took her place at the podium. “We do need to get the elections
handled this evening though, as well as vote on the meeting list and fundraiser
lists for this year that I’ve put together.”
“You know
what you’re doing, just hand them out. We all agree. Right ladies?” Samantha
said loudly as she gulped down a bottled water that was brought to the meeting.
Looking
around Lacee noted everyone nodded in agreement.
“Well,
alright then. We all agree to the fundraising list?” Lacee asked.
Everyone
said yes.
“We all
agree to the meeting list for the year?”
Again,
everyone agreed.
“Well, I
guess the only thing left is the offices.” Lacee hadn’t wanted to be at this
meeting either but felt a little underappreciated given all the time she’d
spent working on everything for them to all just want to not view any of it.
It was
decided she’d remain PTA president and everyone else would keep the previous
year’s office elections. It was simpler that way with everyone already
proficient in their roles. After planning the fundraisers, all the mothers
headed home to collect children and get to the big game.
When
everyone was gone, she quickly grabbed her stuff and called in her to go order
for Faith’s Diner.
Leaving
the school, she headed to Frank’s Station for gas, tapping impatiently on her
steering wheel as Danny, one of Frank’s newer hires, filler her gas tank,
checked all the fluids in her truck, and checked the air in her tires.
“Anything
else, ma’am?” Danny asked in his drawl. His family had recently moved to the
area. No one knew exactly where they were from, but Lacee imagined somewhere
deep south.
“That’s
all, Dann. You have a great evening.” Lacee told him as she handed him the cash
for the gas and oil he had put in – as well as a decent tip.
When she got
to Faith’s Diner, she added on four sodas to go and paid, thankful to finally
be heading home to pick up the kids.
Luckily,
as she honked in the driveway, her kids had followed directions and came
bounding out the door to get to the football game. Originally, she had planned
to just drop them off and head home for some extra cleaning, but in the
end, she decided to grab her food out of
the bag from Faith’s Diner to eat with the kids and stay for the football game.
The
cleaning and laundry would still be there when she got home.
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