Janus House capped its namesake hill, an irregular tor whose eastern ridge had long since sloughed away, leaving behind a raw cliff. A lake – rendered squalid after the ancient mudslide – sloshed beneath. Jack and I slowed our climb. The remains of an opulent mansion-turned-inn still bore four-alarm scorch marks.
+++++“You’re sure about this?” he murmured, rifling through his backpack, again.
+++++“Positive,” I offered.
+++++“It’s a bad idea.”
+++++“It’s a one-way ticket out of debt.” I eased up the fretful stairs, knocked.
+++++Mary appeared, her ovine face impassive. “Jill.”
+++++“Jillian.”
+++++She looked past me. “Hi, Jack,” she bleated. Jack smiled mechanically; I squeezed his hand.
+++++In the former living room, we joined Margery Daw, Solomon Grundy, and Tommy Tucker beneath the scalloped ceiling. Margery blinked, blitzed. Tommy (Cub Scout dropout) knelt before the fireplace, cursing charred matches and the useless poker. Jack came to help. “Kitty coming?” I asked.
+++++“Nope,” Solomon rasped. “Vice Squad picked her up yesterday. Third strike.”
+++++“And Mr. Winkie?” asked Jack.
+++++“Ran out in the altogether to provide Kitty with an alibi. Arrested for displaying his cock robin.”
+++++“Great,” I sighed. A drop spattered on my arm.
+++++“When’s the real party? When’s he coming? The Mu–” began Mary.
+++++“Eleven,” I interjected.
+++++Jack, nimbly – “How about a game?”
+++++Mary plucked an empty from the corner. “Spin the Bottle?”
+++++We’d started playing when the boys were still snapping our training bras. No one objected, and we sank or scuttled onto the floor. Mary, as the ruin’s official squatter/hostess, went first: Jack. Her puckered maw loomed. He turned, bussed her jawbone.
+++++Jack spun Margery. Margery may or may not have noticed. Solomon helped her land Tommy. “Margery, you still with us?” She blinked. The game spun on, until Mary finally planted her lips on Jack’s, and I heard a whining engine.
+++++“He’s here,” Jack said.
+++++“Jack and I will handle it,” I insisted, offering Mary the universal stay-put gesture. Sit.

***

I recognized the fetid light in the Muffin Man’s eyes. “You got the money?” he hissed.
+++++Classic. My eyebrows arched toward his industrial thermos. “The pail?”
+++++He opened it, resentfully. The firelight within glinted across the face of the full-to-the-brim water-of-life within. “Test it,” the Muffin Man growled. Jack withdrew two factory-sealed syringes from his bag, handed me one, shrugged.
+++++“Be my guest,” I said.
+++++“Go easy,” grunted the Muffin Man.
+++++Jack found a vein. Within seconds, his pupils began to waltz.
+++++“Glorious.”
+++++We waited a few minutes, to avoid unhappy surprises, then completed our transaction (Jack’s savings, my savings, the Muffin Man’s pocket). I accepted the thermos, mind awhirl with distribution challenges, and tugged Jack back toward the house.
+++++Mary stood on the threshold.
+++++With the poker.
+++++ “What the hell?” I demanded.
+++++“Jack’s and my hostile takeover of your business,” Mary smirked.
+++++I looked to Jack – flying, apparently. “Over my dead body.”
+++++“Perfect,” said Mary, and she lunged, wielding her poker like a rapier – but the rotten step collapsed beneath her… She struggled, swearing…
+++++I had nothing – no knife, no convenient fallen branch. Just one prickling thought…
+++++I stripped the packaging from my syringe, ran toward Mary, avoided the swooping poker, stuck my needle in her neck, and pressed the plunger…
+++++She dropped.
+++++I peeped inside the house. Wasted, all three of them. Then I turned to Jack – still beyond the stars. “You chose her, huh?”
+++++“…sorry?” he smiled.
+++++I paused. “OK. Look, the moon’s rising. Let’s go see.”
+++++He staggered affably alongside me to the edge of the hill; we basked in the moonlight. Then I gave him a solid shove over the edge. No doubt of a broken crown.
+++++Red-and-blue lights danced up the road. No time. No options. I stuffed the syringes and their wrappings into the thermos, flung it out over the lake. Then – controlled tumbling down the hill to land, battered but miraculously alive, near the other body. Just another victim.
+++++I whispered, “Goodbye, Jack.”

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Linda McMullen

Linda McMullen is a wife, mother, diplomat, and homesick Wisconsinite. Her short stories and the occasional poem have appeared in over eighty literary magazines. She received Pushcart and Best of the Net nominations in 2020.

Latest posts by Linda McMullen (see all)

• The Rhyme and the Reason - July 11, 2021