three blind mice. My other current project. I hope you enjoy

After he comes home from a night with his mistress to find his wife murdered and children murdered, Mike Lordon's life goes right to s**t. Soon the mysteries surrounding a murder in his own past come

It was a shabby motel, but not the worst he’d ever seen. He had been in some real pits, especially these last few years. Being violently ejected from your life, and hunted like an animal, makes one indifferent to one’s lodging.
There was a single bed, with hideous beige paisley sheets that smelled of mothballs and old tobacco. It stood upon carpeting, roughly the same color, though stained in various places with God-Knows-What. It  covered all the room, but for the small entrance way and bathroom, which where both tiled in plain white with dark grout. The furniture was simple, and minimal; a nightstand, the bed, a small writing desk, and the centerpiece of any good motel room, a large TV stand with built-in dresser. Upon it, a hulking fossil of a television set, complete with dial and antenna, commanded the room, like a king upon its low budget throne. The water worked reliably, the other guests and the staff kept to themselves, mostly. The walls were thin, and you could always hear what the person in the next room was doing. All it all, it wasn’t so bad.
The room also had a closet, but Alex Lordon, the current lodger, had not even opened its door, off in the far corner beyond the massive television, opposite the bed. Nor, in fact, had he opened even a single one the myriad drawers  all about the room in the four days he’d been here.  His belongings where exactly where he’d set them when he’d first come into the room; a single backpack and two travel bags, which between them held his every worldly possession, except his very most prized and precious. One of the two items, a small, unlabeled package wrapped in brown butcher paper, sat on the nightstand beside his bed. The other was in his hands.
Alex was doing the thing he did more than anything else in his life. Sitting on a bed, in someplace or another, staring with nostalgia and regret at an old Polaroid of a happy family. They were at a park, this family of ours.  Two boys, ten and eight, stood between their parents, and upon every face was a smile. Alex knew every face in the picture perfectly but one. He knew Colby’s pug nose, he knew Jacob’s freckled cheeks, and his glasses, and how he didn’t quite know how to smile properly. And Cindy, the woman, he knew her best of all. But the man who stood with her, hand in hand, was a stranger, someone who’d died long ago. He no longer recognized the face of the thing he saw in the mirror. The features were not his. He had never been so gaunt, so very thin. His eyes were not so unhinged, and they never twitched half so much. His hair was always combed, and he shaved daily, not like this shaggy, unkempt creature he lived as now. He was forty, he looked at least fifty, and felt like he ought to have grown old and died at least twice already.
Alex Lordon was a family man. But his family was gone now, gone these five long years. And with them had gone the man he was. The family man had perished. Now his name was fugitive. His occupation was survival, his motive was uncertain, and his home was three bags and a photograph.  He lets out a heavy sigh, and sets the picture down by the small, brown package. A stray gust of wind blows through his flesh and bones, through the cracked open window. Curtains the same dreadful beige as the carpet send shadows to dance upon his wall, ghost-like in the bad light of the motel lamp. He regards the small package for a moment, with more than a hint of disdain.
And then it happens. The thing wrapped within the butcher paper twitches weakly once, falls still for half a breath, and then it writhes in earnest. They’ve found him! His breathing catches, and he all but launches himself across the bed, snatching up his prized possessions, and doubling back for his bags. The bedside lamp shuddered ominously, and  launched itself at his head so quickly he barely had time to duck. The bedroom door was shaking on its hinges as some tremendous, thundering force pounded upon it. Alex rushed to the window and climbed through, and then ran. He did not look back. He did not breath. He just ran, never pausing, to the beat up Buick  at the end of the parking lot, yanked open the door, threw he bags into the passenger seat, and peeled out of the parking lot to the ear splitting sound of screeching tires. In his rear view mirror, he could see flames in the window of what had until just now been his room.
His heart was racing, he was on the verge of panic, muttering the protective chant he’d learned from Jenny, so long ago. He would not sleep this night, or anytime soon. He had to get out of the state, he had to find somewhere to lay low. What he really needed was a way to contact Jenny, or Marv, or anyone, but only god knew how long that would take, and him and Alex didn’t speak any more.
Soon the wide open road between New Mexico and Colorado stretched before him in the darkness, and he had calmed down enough to think. Seeing no end to his living nightmare, Alex thought back to how it all began.

__________________________________________________________________________________

Five years earlier….
Alex Lordon was driving home to his family, listening to the radio in his car. He could still picture Jenny’s face, and the guilt was rising from the pit of his stomach.
Jenny. His mistress.
Alex never imagined himself being unfaithful, but somehow it had happened. It was something about jenny, something deep and mysterious, alluring but very dangerous, like a poison apple. He had a happy marriage, and he loved his wife and sons. Sometimes he imagined, just for a moment, that he was doing this to them involuntarily, that, Jenny had put a spell on him, to draw him to her. But in his heart, he knew it was his fault, his failing.
He turned the radio louder to drown out the guilt. The haunting tune of hotel California drifted through the car speakers, and he let the music take away his thoughts. Later, the song would be forever etched within his mind as an omen of misfortune, a warning of things to come. But in that moment, the day was pleasant. It was early morning in Saratoga California, and the chill of the dying winter could still be felt, albeit slightly. The light filtered in through a cloudy grayish cataract, but the sun was beginning to peak through. As Alex drew closer to home, he felt his shame starting to ebb. That was about the time he heard the sirens, and had to switch lanes as a speeding squad car blew past him and sped away. He said a silent prayer under his breath, and couldn’t tell you what it was for.
When he turned into his neighborhood, the nightmare began. The cop car from earlier was parked on his block, along with half the force, it seemed. Nosy neighbors lined the streets, and there was bright yellow caution tape blocking the entrance to his house. The shock hit him in a huge wave. A million horrible questions came into his mind, and he forced them away. It was all he could do to park the car and half walk, half stumble to his front drive. Two officers were waiting for him, an older guy with graying hair an east coast accent holding a clipboard and filling out a police report, and a younger man who seemed deeply uncomfortable, probably the new guy on the force. The man with the clipboard informed him of what had happened.
“Sir my name is officer Fowler, my partner here is officer Duncan,  and we must inform you that there has been a break in.”
“A Robbery? What about my family. My wife, and sons?” Alex nearly shouted the words as panic overtook him.
“It appears as though the children have been abducted, and we have already begun our investigation into finding them. But I’m afraid I have worse news. “ Alex knew what he would say next, it was all in the eyes, the sad pitying eyes, with a wisp of suspicion lurking within them. “I regret to inform you that your wife, Cinthia Lordon  has passed away. We are treating this as a homicide investigation.
Murder.
Murder.
The word rang in his mind like an iron bell foretelling doom. The blood froze in Alex’s veins. Even his bones felt the cold. He couldn’t really speak yet, but when the officer began to ask questions, he stammered out responses as best he could.
“Do you know of any enemies your family might have?
“No.”
“Any relative who may have taken the boys?”
“No.”

“Where were you during the time this was happening.”
“I was… Out.” The officer shot him a suspicious look, but didn’t press the issue just now. Alex wanted to run, or to hide, but he knew what he had to d before he could. “Can I see her?” Hearing himself say it felt like a punch to the gut. The officers glanced to one another, and the younger fellow spoke for a change.
“You can go in, but we have to inform you, it will b difficult to take. Its… bad.” the older man said nothing, he looked into space and Alex could tell he was trying to clear his mind. After a moment, he returned to himself and nodded, then lifted the yellow tape and let Alex enter his home.
The inside of the smallish one story house had been decimated. Alex saw the television shattered in front of the broken stand, shards of glass glittering in light that filtered through the burn holes in the curtains. The carpet too was burned in places. Fowler and Duncan led him past the kitchen, where a large chef’s knife was missing from the knife block on the end of the granite counter top, down the hall to the bedrooms. The children’s rooms were vacant, with open doors to reveal similar devastation within, but he and  the officers took a right halfway down the hall, where the  master bedroom’s door had been ripped from its hinges. Here too was shattered furniture, and the broken skeleton of a television, this time Alex’s prized flat screen.  He hesitated to enter the room, and glanced at the doorway. That’s when he saw it nailed to the door post
It was a plump, largish white mouse, nailed to the wall by its tail, its eyes gouged likewise with long iron nails. He felt suddenly, sickeningly drawn to it. He lost himself for a moment. As the cops prepared to lead him through the door,  they seemed not to see the ghastly souvenir. He couldn’t resist the urge to take it, nor could he have explained why. Alex Lordon walked into the bedroom where his wife had died, with a mutilated dead mouse in his back pocket.
The first thing that hit him was the blood. It stained the carpet at the foot of the bed, and covered much of the blankets, soaking into the mattress. Cindy was lying on the bed, curled into a strange half-fetal position, her hand still on the handle of the knife in her stomach. Alex had to look away. He sobbed to himself as he felt his world crumbling around him. He found himself staring blankly at the wall, at the cat shaped clock that she had loved. It was broken, stopped at 5am, which must have been when his life had ended. It felt odd to think he hadn’t even noticed.
After several minutes, Officer Duncan broke the terrible silence. “Do you have anywhere to stay sir? Relatives?” His voice was filled with all the concern Alex didn’t want. All he wanted was to curl into a ball and die.
Instead, he said “I can figure something out. My brother lives in the city.” It was like he was watching himself from far away, like all of this was happening to a stranger.
“Very good. Now, I apologize but you have to leave while we continue the investigations.”
“My boys. What do you know about my sons.”
“ We found no indication they were harmed. We believe at this time the abduction was the main objective, and that something went south.. We are looking for the boys as we speak, Mr. Lordon. We will be in touch.”
And with that he was escorted out of his home, and never sent foot in it again.
He hadn’t gone to his brother, but he did get a call from him, which he took in his hotel room, drinking and watching old reruns of the Simpsons. He didn’t remember much of the conversation, or much of anything from that day, nor did he want to. He was shattered, reeling and just wanted to escape. Nothing helped. Not the first beer or the seventh,or the extra-large pizza for certain, but he thought of them more as self punishment. On the smallish hotel tv, Homer Simpson was running in panicked circles and screaming with bright orange flames blazing on his shirt. Alex could relate.
It was late in the evening when exhaustion and bad beer finally got the best of him, and brought him into a dark and troubling dreamscape. He thought he might have screamed in his sleep at one point. The dreams came in fragments. He saw a fire, the mouse with the gouged eyes, a strange symbol he did not recognize, people in hoods. The pieces simply refused to congeal into an understandable whole. And then, without warning, a great banging sound dragged him out of the dream, and into a body he was really beginning to regret abusing yesterday.
The sun was barely beginning to turn the world from black to grey when the knock on the door roused him. It was the police, he knew they were coming to follow up with him today. His head felt like it was full of agitated African honeybees, his legs were made of rubber, and his stomach felt like his last meal must have included hot coals, or maybe live emperor scorpions. Top top it all off, he was miserable, alone, and felt like a real sack of s**t for losing himself like he did last night. He felt less up for giving a police interview, possibly than he ever had. He was still in the shirt he wore to sleep last night, stained with pizza sauce and regret, but couldn't gather the energy to change before he went to the door to let in the officers and start the questions.
In hindsight, that was probably the least like s**t he'd feel for the next several years.