Read Online The Kill-Off by Jim Thompson - Free Book Online

along the edge of the baseboard, smiling to myself, watching her neck muscles tighten as I moved out of her range of vision.
    I was right behind her before fear forced her to whirl around. She pressed back against the stove, putting her hands out in a pushing-away gesture.
    “Why, mother,” I said. “What’s the matter? You’re not afraid of your own darling son, are you?”
    “Go ’way!” Her eyes rolled whitely. “Lea’ me alone, you hear?”
    “But I just wanted a kiss,” I said. “Just a kiss from my dear, sweet mother. After all, I haven’t had one now, since—well, I was about three, wasn’t I? A very long time for a child to go without a kiss from his own mother. I remember being rather heartbroken when—”
    “D-don’t!” she moaned. “You don’t know nothin’ about—Get outta here! I tell doctor on you, an’ he—”
    “You mean you’re not my mother?” I said. “You’re truly not?”
    “N-no! I tol’ you, ain’t I? Ain’t nothin’, nobody! I—I—”
    “Well, all right.” I shrugged. “In that case…”
    I grabbed her suddenly, clamped her against me, pinning her arms to her sides. She gasped, moaned, struggled futilely. She didn’t, of course, cry out for help.
    “How about it,” I said, “as long as you’re not my mother. Keep it all in the family, huh? What do you say we—”
    I let go of her, laughing.
    I stepped back, wiping her spittle from my face.
    “Why, Hattie,” I said. “Why on earth did you do a thing like that? All I wanted was—What?” My heart did a painful skip-jump, and there was a choking lump in my throat. “What? I don’t believe I understood you, Hattie.”
    She looked at me, lips curled back from her teeth. Eyes narrowed, steady, with contempt. With something beyond contempt, beyond disgust and hatred.
    “You hear’ me right,” she said. “You couldn’ do nothin’. Couldn’ an’ never will.”
    “Yes?” I said. “Are you very sure of that, my dearest mother?”
    “Huh! Me, I tell you. ” She grinned a skull’s grin. “Yeah, I ver’ sure, aw right, my deares’ son.”
    “And it amuses you,” I said. “Well, I’ll tell you, mother. Doubtless it is very funny, but I don’t believe we’d better have any further displays of amusement. Not that I’d mind killing you, you understand. In fact, I’ll probably get around to that eventually. But I have other projects afoot at the moment—more important projects, if I may say so without hurting your feelings—”
    She moved suddenly, made a dash for her room. I followed her—it adjoins the kitchen—and leaned absently against the door. The locked door to my mother’s room.
    The door that had been locked for…
    Yes, my recollection was right; it is always right. I had been about three the last time she had kissed me, the last time she had cuddled, babied, mother-and-babied me. I would have remembered it, even if I did not have almost total recall. For how could one forget such a fierce outpouring of love, the balm-like, soul-satisfying warmth of it?
    Or forget its abrupt, never-to-be-again withdrawal?
    Or the stupid, selfish, cruel, bewildering insistence that it had never been?
    I was a very silly little boy. I was a very foolish, bad little boy, and I had better pray God to forgive me. I was not sweets or hon or darlin’ or even Bobbie. I was Mister Bobbie—Master Robert. Mistah—Mastah Bobbie, a reborn stranger among strangers.
    My continuing illnesses? Psychosomatic. The manifold masques of frustration.
    My intelligence? Compensatory. For certainly I inherited none from either of them.
    I listened at night, when they thought I was asleep. I asked a few questions, strategically spacing them months apart.
    She’d had a child; she’d had to wet-nurse me. Where was that child? Dead? Well, where and when had he died? When and where had my mother died?
    It was ridiculously simple. Only a matter of putting a few questions to a fatuous imbecile—my father—and an