Lullaby

Soft songs interupted, interupted by odd bits of popping static, filled the small apartment. It now claimed only three. The first was a frail little girl who slept soundly in her bed, filled with the liquid dreams her mommy had insisted that she rake before bed. When she had told her mommy that she wasn't sick her mommy insisted. This wasn't sick medicine, it was angel medicine. It kept the bed dreams away and let the angels sing to her til sunrise. And if she was really good and drank every drop, just maybe the child could go visit her grandparents. The grandparents were what sealed it for the child. She had so missed her Gransie so much and she hadn't got to see her since the day mommy had said that Gransie had gone away cause of the bad fits. The little girl loved her Gransie.

The second was a once beautiful woman, her blonde locks had begun to fade back to their once dull brown shades, the bottles and bathwater that once kept them bright as pale gold had become cast-offs, more victims of her lost faith. The woman sat alone at her second-hand table staring down at a harmless little, now empty, bottle; the ice box in the corner her only company. As another carol started out of the cracked wilco, the mother struggled to hold back her sobs.

Her child was better off now. This is no life for an angel like her. Good bye Anna, as she mouthed the unspoken words tears started to freely stream down her cheeks. The mother's hands were shaking, shaking worse now than they had ever shaken before.

She had asked for the strength, and she had gotten in. Did what had to be done. There was no comfort to be found in those rationalizations. Growing up Father Dobbs had made it clear where people who did what she did would go. Her husband had forced her to the first time. She could have said now. Should have said no.

But she wasn't strong then.

How could anyone ever forgive her? What made her think that she deserved forgiveness? Or even pity? No, it was her own fault, even if she had been weak, it was her own fault.

Things were different now. By sunrise she knew she wouldn't have a family anymore, she was learning to accept that. I love you Anna. Only when she remembered that she was losing her daughter did she feel remorse now. The child was perfect, and now she had to do it. There was no going back and with the overheard whispers at the last party she had to go to, she knew what people were saying. Who they were beginning to eye.

No more. She found a way to get the strength she needed.

Slowly forcing herself back into the moment for one more task, she picked up the pencil that had waited so patiently in front of her and began to scrawl out a note. Someone had to know. As she made the last of her marks on the tablet she heard the distinct tapping sound coming down the hall.

The rhythmic sound of metal on wood stopped just outside her door. The woman caught her breath, maybe it would go away, maybe he had changed his mind.

After what felt like an eternity three hard knocks slammed into the doorframe. No. It was time to pay. She walked slowly to the door. She opened it slowly, the strength was gone now. Everythig was gone now.

When the old door swung free the one time mother saw his face, she would have screamed if she hadn't been entranced by the horrors found in his eyes.

The dark figure stood alone in the hall for some time, taking in his fee. He knew she hadn't been alone in those dreary rooms, but there was something wrong with the way it smelled to him. No she had paid him what she owed him. That would have to be enough for now.

As the figure drifted back down the hall he hummed softly to the next holiday tune that took its turn on the radio.

Later the police would find the scene and have their own puzzles to solve. The woman dead in the doorway, apparently collapsing while fleeing the scene. A man in his bed, his throat slashed so deep only the spine had kept his head on, and a letter saying where they were to send a little girl who simply wasn’t there.