The Perfect Family

A Story by Alexzandria R.

Maggie finally mustered up the courage to hitchhike away from her abusive meth-maker boyfriend. She's picked up by a seemingly perfect family. But there's something strange about them. It's not safe.

I lit a cigarette out of boredom, leaning against a street lamp to regain some of my energy. I’d been walking for several hours and my feet were hurting too much to continue without resting for at least a few minutes. I watched the cars pass as I smoked. Seeing them go so fast reminded me of how much I was truly lagging behind. Not that it was a race or a competition. It was just me and my destination. However, I needed to keep moving fast. Randy would be on my trail soon enough and I couldn’t have that.
I knew I should’ve taken his car in the night instead of walking but what if he had caught me? I examined the bruises on my wrist, the size and shape of his hand. My eye and cheekbone throbbed where dark sunglasses covered up what he’d done. I couldn’t risk being caught leaving. I had to walk out while he was working. Let me rephrase that. I had to walk out while he was running the meth lab. I took a backpack full of clothes, a couple of water bottles, and some snacks. No money. That’s why I was walking. He had the only car and I had no money for public transit. I knew that he had thousands of dollars hidden away somewhere but he wouldn’t dare tell me where his stash was.
He bought me everything I needed including my cigarettes. Could never remember what brand I liked though. Sometimes he gave me a few cents a month for myself as some sort of pay for cooking and cleaning and whatever else it was that he needed, but I was never good at saving money and I had barely enough left to buy me a box of Tic Tacs let alone pay bus fare.
My cigarette had burned down to the butt. I flicked it away and crushed it beneath my leather boots. It was starting to get dark outside and the street lamp above my head had come on. I glanced at my watch. It was almost seven. He would be home by then. I could picture him pulling up to his cheap apartment and entering the place to find nothing on the table. I could picture him calling my name and raging over the fact that I hadn’t cooked that night.
I could picture him punching through another wall after searching the apartment for me and finding nothing before checking his stash to be sure I at least didn’t take any of his money. I could picture him slamming the door closed so hard that another picture falls off the wall and getting into his car to find me. I knew he’d most likely been on the phone with a few of his runners and dealers as well. He had one on every corner up until you entered another guy’s territory.
That was the plan. I had to get into enemy territory. At least I would be safe from his guys. From there, I’d find someone to stay with or sleep underneath an underpass. Anything. Maybe I’d spend the night in a foreclosed building. Everyone knew that’s where the teenage runaways hid. At 19, I was still technically one of them. It didn’t matter where I stayed as long as I knew he couldn’t get me.
My forehead itched and I scratched it, wincing and tearing my hand away when I felt the sharp pain and remembered what had happened. The night before, he’d gotten drunk again and was high on his own product. He raged because I hadn’t cooked his steak enough. He threw his mostly full beer can at my face, splitting my forehead about two or three inches across. My nails had torn away part of the fresh scab and I could feel some blood starting to trickle down my face. I wiped it away with my hand and began walking again.
Seeing the cars continued to remind me of how slow I was actually going on foot. It continued to get darker outside and I did the math in my head, calculating how far it would be until I reached a place where he or his men wouldn’t set foot. Several more miles. I couldn’t get that far on foot before someone caught me. I needed transportation.
I stood on the curb for a moment weighing my options. Which is more risky? Walking the rest of the way or hitching a ride with a stranger? Which would take longer? Walking would take another few hours and hitchhiking was a gamble as far as time. However, the time walking would take was irrefutably going to be several hours. While hitchhiking could take anywhere from a few minutes to walking time. I decided that hitchhiking was the best option. There was a better chance of getting to point B faster.
Dropped my bag off of my shoulder, allowing it to thud to the ground before pointing a thumb over my shoulder and waiting. I was in luck. Within minutes, someone stopped. An older guy with a pretty wife and a kid about fourteen in the back seat.
“Where to, miss?” The old man at the wheel asked. He was friendly and couldn’t have been younger than fifty but he was good looking and smiled a lot. I could tell he had a lot of money and looking at his wife in the passenger seat, who wore an enormous pearl choker that must have cost him a fortune, I could tell that the was one of those rich-off-old-money middle aged men who got the younger ladies by buying them shiny things. The kid in the back seat kept his hood over his face and his headphones in his ears. A gray fox with a thick wallet, a gold digger, and an angsty teen. Not exactly the Joneses with the white picket fence and the son and daughter who always get along and eat apple slices on road trips in the Winnebago, but they’d do.
“About 10 miles East. Not a specific destination. You can just drop me off on the road once we get there if you like. I can manage from there.”
He nodded once and I got into the car with my bag, giving him a grateful smile. The vehicle smelled rancid with a hint of Febreeze to mask it but I dealt with it. Once I had my seatbelt fastened, he pressed the accelerator and adjusted the rearview mirror to see me in the back seat.
“So what’s your name, miss?” He asked.
“Maggie. Short for Magnolia. And you?”
“Clarence. This is my wife Janice and my son Colby. We’re just on our way home from a dinner party aren't we dear?” He glanced toward his wife, awaiting a response. She said nothing. “I apologize for her silence, miss Magnolia. It seems she had quite a bit to drink at the dinner party earlier and she seems to have gone to sleep. I’m always the designated driver, you see.”
“You don’t drink? Or you don’t drink only when you have to drive?”
“I used to be an alcoholic but I’ve been sober since my oldest kid was born. Gotta set a good example, especially with them getting to be drinking age. I’ve got four children. Would you like to see?”
I honestly didn’t care to see his children, but I accepted just to be polite. He handed me a brown leather Rolodex wallet. I opened it and four pictures unfolded, each one depicting one of Clarence’s children. Each one was either a teenager or a young adult. The photos seemed to go in order from oldest to youngest. A man about twenty-five, a man about twenty, a girl about eighteen, and Colby, a boy about fourteen. Each child had the same blank eyes. Maybe it was a hereditary trait. Some people just had these eyes that cut into your soul. I looked into the side view mirror on the passenger side and saw that Janice’s eyes were closed, so I couldn’t tell whether or not this was a trait from the mother’s side, but Clarence had warm inviting eyes. They certainly didn’t get it from him.
“Your children are lovely,” I said, handing the wallet back to him.
“You like ‘em? They’re Jackson, Aiden, Samantha, and of course little Colby here. Of course, not all of them are from Janice here. I’ve had previous wives but each one just...rotted away.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, sir. Was it cancer?” I replied, feeling a bit awkward speaking to a stranger about his dead wives.
“Yeah...cancer...” He trailed off and became silent for a solid five minutes. I could hear the music from Colby’s earbuds. Frank Sinatra? I guessed that it had been his father’s old iPod and they never got around to adding new music. I jumped, startled, when Clarence suddenly began speaking again. “Say, miss Magnolia! Instead of me dropping you off on the street in some strange place, how about you come spend the night with us? That sound peachy?”
"Oh...um…” I thought about refusing for a moment. Not that I thought he or his family would hurt me. I simply didn’t wish to be intrusive or a burden. But again, I weighed my options. A night on the street with an undecided destination and Randy looking for me? Or a night with this nice family? “That sounds nice, sir. I’d love to stay at your place tonight if it’s not too much trouble.”
“Not at all.” He said, flashing a toothy smile in the rearview mirror. He became silent again for a moment and I felt safe in my surroundings. After all, Randy wouldn’t expect me to be staying with some rich guy and his family. Enemy territory was too obvious. It was stupid to think that I could go there and be any safer than I was here but it was the safest place I could come up with. Until now.
Just then, the car hit a bump and Colby’s head rocked forward slightly and then back into his hood. I got a glimpse of something red on his scalp before it hid itself in the hood. My heart skipped and I became very conscious of the gash on my own head.
“Um, sir...I think Colby may be bleeding from his head.” My voice shook as I notified Clarence of his son’s possible injury. For all I knew, he had given that to Colby himself. I briefly regretted accepting his invitation to stay with them.
“Oh no that’s not blood. The kid’s been dying his hair red. You know how teenagers are this generation. No one is satisfied with their natural hair. Everyone needs to look like a My Little Pony.” He chuckled and I took a deep breath, feeling better about the situation but not quite believing him. I decided to let it go. Clarence seemed very friendly. I brushed it off as me being paranoid simply because of the way Randy had treated me. “Well, we’re here,” Clarence announced as we pulled into the driveway of a large white house with several floors and a balcony or two. He handed me a key. “You go ahead inside,” he said “Go wash up. You look like you’ve had a long day. Bathroom is down the hall, first door on the right. Can’t miss it. After that, the next door is the guest room. I’ll have some of Janice’s night clothes waiting there since I’m not sure what you have packed in that bag there,” he gestured toward the backpack I had sitting on the floor.
I opened the car door, slung my bag over my shoulder, and was about to get out of the car but stopped.
“Thank you, sir. This means a lot and you have no idea how much you’ve done for me,” I told him, making eye contact via rearview mirror. He nodded once and gestured toward my arm with his head.
“I’d say from that black handprint on your wrist there that I know exactly what I’ve done for you. Go wash up, miss Magnolia. You’re safe,” He flashed his toothy smile again and I smiled back gratefully before leaving the car and going into the house.
The front door took me into a foyer with a beige runner that complimented the blindingly white walls and pale wood floors. To the right was a large family room with expensive modern furniture placed beside enormous windows that took up almost an entire wall. The thick black curtains contrasted with the white room and the furniture was all deep burgundy. To the left was the hall that he’d mentioned. More white walls and pale wood floors. Another beige runner. Nothing interesting aside from the abundance of red doors. First one on the left, right? I opened that one and quickly closed it again, regretting shutting the door that roughly and loudly. Wrong door. Inside was a huge bedroom with more red furniture and white walls and a red canopy bed to match the furniture. Someone was sleeping there. Probably one of his children, I assumed.
I opened the door to my right instead. There was the bathroom. White and black checkered tile floor and a porcelain claw foot bathtub with a shiny gold rim. Again, the walls were white and a room in this house wouldn’t be complete without deep red. The shower curtain, the hand towels, and the rug in front of the toilet were all the color of blood. I ran myself a bath and cleaned myself up with some of the fancy soaps that I assumed belonged to Janice. I tried to use it sparingly, as some of the bottles were almost empty and the bar of soap was rather small. Afterward, I did as instructed and went into the next room (the correct room this time, thank god!) to find a bedroom the same as the one I'd accidentally peeked into earlier. A pink velvet nightgown lay across the red bedspread.
After dressing myself, I wandered into the family room that I’d noticed earlier. As I approached, I could see the backs of several heads of people sitting on the couches and in the chairs. I could hear Clarence animatedly speaking but aside from that, the room was silent.
The thick black curtains on the large windows were closed and upon entering the room, I noticed Janice facing me, sitting in the chair next to Clarence, still wearing her dress from the dinner party and still sporting that humongous pearl choker that took up most of her neck. She was awake and I'd been correct about the children getting their piercing eyes from their mother. However, that doesn't account for the ones that aren’t hers.
As I approached, I noticed a faint smell. Like a rat had died but kept itself clean. The moment I noticed this, Clarence must have also because he sprayed a generous amount of Febreeze into the air and continued speaking. Once I’d come further into the room, past the couches and the chairs that faced Clarence, I saw the source of the smell.
Shaking, I looked to couch. There sat four people, each one with piercing dead eyes. The same four people from the photos in the wallet. Jackson was blue in the lips, face, and fingernails. Suffocation. Maybe cyanide poisoning. Aiden had the clear mark of a belt across his throat. Strangulation. Samantha had a bullet hole in her head. Colby had multiple gashes all across his scalp and forehead and parts of his skull bashed in. Blunt force trauma, I assumed. Not one of these people had a drop of blood on them. Clarence must have kept them regularly bathed.
They all looked the same as they had in the photos. Had he used makeup to mask the blue lips and ligature marks? I remembered in the photos, Samantha and Colby had been wearing hats. Now I knew why.
“Magnolia!” Clarence greeted me happily. “Would you like to sit and join your brothers and sister? Your mother and I were just about to prepare some snacks for us all.”
Unable to stand anymore, my weak knees dropped me onto Samantha’s lap. Her head lolled to one side, her neck cracking loudly.
“You always were so close with your sister,” Clarence chuckled. “Your mother and I are headed to the kitchen. We’ll be back in a few with some cheese and crackers.”
With that, he lifted Janice out of her seat, her right arm slung over his shoulders as if she’d broken her legs and he was helping her to safety. When he stood, her head flopped back and she stared at me, unblinking. Her throat was slit badly enough that her head was just barely held on by some flesh. Some strings of pearls on her necklace rolled into the wound. Clarence left the room with Janice and I sat there in Samantha’s lap unable to move. He returned without crackers and cheese or Janice. He held a kitchen knife.