Priceless Problems

The first time he heard his mother scream he was five years old. It was at three is on the fifth of January. He remembered the date because his sister’s first day of school after the winter break was the very next day. At first, he wanted to run in the room and save her. till his older sister snatched him back and told him not to get involved.

By the time he was twelve years old the abuse no longer happened in the middle of the night. The day times and evening hours had a time slot now. The faces of the abuser had changed so many times over the years “the boy” could no longer keep track of their names. So, he kept track of their faces on a canvas where he could change them if need be. He wanted to change the angry looks in their eyes to love because he knew his mother needed the love so bad. as the years went by he changed several faces on his canvas. There was always one face he could never get right. It was the face of his mother.

So ‘the boy’ decided to go to school for dentistry. He no longer believed in the concept of the canvas painting a smile on sad faces. He knew that some sad faces could be fixed so he decided to focus on those who needed to get their smile back. His mother needed her smile back as well. But some things could not be fixed with denture glue and steel bridges.

There was something about the look in her eyes when he talked to her on his Sunday visits that puzzled him the most. She told him on one visit that she was working on a new relationship and she knew this time it would be perfect. He smiled at the thought of that but, couldn’t help but wonder who this mystery man was. By now he knew his mother was too old to physically withstand the things that made her scream at night. He had never seen bruises on her face the mornings after. And the few cuts and scrapes on her hands was just a sign that she had fought back. So for that, he was proud.

Whenever he would come home on weekends, he would stop by his mother’s house and ask her how the new man creation was doing.  ” I think I finally have a man for me” she would say.

“The boy” finally got married and went to Barcelona for his honeymoon. As he sat in the airport he picked up a newspaper.  There on the front page, he saw a picture of his mother.

Woman arrested today for mutilation of over seventeen men over a time span of twenty-three years. She took various body parts from men and sewed them together. When asked why she did it she said “I wanted to create the perfect man, one that wouldn’t abuse me, make me scream at night, one my son could be proud of. I wanted the man to be priceless. Because some men are simply Priceless Problems.

Twenty years later when they rolled her into the death chamber the families of the victims waited patiently as she was picked and prepared for death. Her son had been to visit the week before and the guards allowed him to show her the picture of a beautiful painting on a canvas he had used to pay for her legal fees. Although he had exhausted tons of funds he just could not stop the date with the lethal injection.

There was only one person in the room at the time of her death, who felt as though his mother was not Write For The Kill.