Winston Bennet

Dead, uncut weeds that catch the amber shine of the late afternoon sun rustle as Winston Bennet clumsily trudges through them. He was not born with a birth defect in his legs, and he had no past injuries that cause him to trudge clumsily. It is the heavy, bloodstained axe that he drags with his right hand that causes the temporary impediment in his step.

Bouncing as it clears tiny lumps of bundled weeds, the axe’s head creates a dark red polka dot trail through the tall growth. Mr. Bennet does not care that the saucer size spots will be unmistakable future evidence because it will not matter in the days to come.

He reaches the dark green grass of his own, well-maintained backyard, and with the left sleeve of his white shirt, which is not blood-soaked like the right, he wipes the glistening sweat beaded on his brow. He takes a few deep breaths to compensate for the exertion endured by his lungs during the arduous trek. As he turns around to face the forest he had just exited, the sun’s intense beams force him to squint his yellowed eyes, which look unusually large because the thick lenses of his over-sized glasses magnify them.

Now facing the dense forest, which begins at the end of a red-spotted trail, Mr. Bennet says, “So long, Barbara Holcomb.”

He does not care about the evidence left behind in the forest and on the grassy trail leading to his backyard, but he still believes in cleanliness. His dear mother – God rest her soul – had taught him to be “clean and lean,” so he unravels the green water hose from its hook that is attached to what used to be his mother’s house – now it belongs to him – and he sprays the red mess off of the tool of vengeance.

Mr. Bennet decides that he will not spray the blood off of his white shirt, black pants, black tie and imitation leather shoes because later he will clean those items more properly in the laundry room. He has already planned for these current events and has purchased the proper materials for maintaining the principles his mother deemed important in his life.

He places the axe, now back to its original color though darker because of the wetness, into the storage space that he had earlier built into the bottom of the house’s back porch. Mr. Bennet then properly winds the hose, places it back on its hook, and makes his way to the front of the large, white-with-blue-trim house.

Before entering the house, he wipes the bottom of his feet on a faded rug that displays, Welcome to the Bennet’s, and he is disappointed to notice that he has smeared blood across Bennet’s. Undoubtedly, he must clean the rug that has lain in front of the house’s entrance since he was young, but that will have to wait.

Now inside the house, he escapes the intense, Mississippi heat and furthers this temporary pleasure by downing a tall glass of lemonade.

Though it is just a single glass, he applies to it a small dab of dish soap and washes it with blistering hot water. He has been triumphant in these last few days, so the last thing he needs is dirty dishes to dampen his victorious mood. He dries the glass, reviving its sparkling properties and puts it back where he had gotten it.

Mr. Bennet enters the laundry room, switches on the light, and is satisfied that he has not allowed dirty clothes to pile up in the hamper. He has been a good boy and his mother –may she rest in peace – would be so proud.

He strips to his underwear, and the many scars enveloping his scrawny torso remind him of how cruel his father was.

His father beat him when he came home with a report card displaying grades lower than A.

His father beat him if Winston ever showed a hint of displeasure when eating something unappealing to his taste buds.

His father even beat him for getting beat up at school, which actually happened a lot.

On November twenty-eighth, nineteen sixty-six, Winston celebrated the fact that his father could beat him no more, for Winston had “accidentally” shot his father during one of their dreaded “we- have- to- do- this- to- prove- I’m- a- good- father” hunting trips. The thirty-thirty bullet had hit his father in the lower stomach, and as dear ole’ dad lay wheezing and bleeding profusely, Winston did nothing but laugh and watch his own father slowly die.

Although it pleases him, Mr. Bennet thinks of the reminiscing as a waste of time; he must take care of the matter at hand. Much preparation is needed to be ready for the Big Finish.

He applies a bleach mixture to the detergent, he has already scooped into the washing machine. He knows the bleach will restore his white work shirt, but he will discard his black pants and black tie because bleach will only ruin them. Besides, he has many more pairs of black dress pants and a plethora of black or somewhat dark ties that would suffice as work attire at the insurance agency.

With a little bleach, Mr. Bennet is able to easily clean off the imitation leather shoes. He then places them neatly beside the laundry room door to air dry.

He starts the washing machine and notices that its muddled clanking provides an interesting contrast to or strange harmony with the continuous buzzing of the phosphorescent light overhead.

No time for silly observations. More work needs to be accomplished, so he puts on casual clothes that he had already stored in the laundry room in preparation for this, the day of all days.

Mr. Bennet’s house is never out of order or messy in the slightest degree, but before the Big Finish can take place, he wants to tidy things up a bit. He starts by dusting the counter tops and ledges throughout the residence. Next, he straightens all items that might have been jarred during the thorough dusting, and after all things are as straight as an arrow, as his mother would have wanted them, he vacuums the floor in every room of the house, even the uncarpeted surfaces.

He knows that if his mother were to come straight down from heaven above, she would wrap her warm arms around him and tell him that he has done such a marvelous job.

Then she would bake him some peanut butter cookies and read to him his favorite childhood stories. After that, they would watch her favorite show, Wheel-of-Fortune.

He realizes that he is once again reminiscing and makes himself stop. He loves his mother and the memories of her, but the Big Finish must occur shortly, so to the shower he goes.

Mr. Bennet thoroughly washes and cleanses himself from any red wetness Barbara Holcomb had left on him. He even takes the time to pick out and wash away the blood that had dried under his neatly groomed fingernails.

The hot shower has restored him to complete cleanliness, and after he dries off and rids his face of any stubble that has grown during the course of the day, he selects the finest suit and tie combination from his mother’s former closet and dresses himself so nicely that even the finest restaurants in the finest cities would not think of turning him away.

He reenters the spotless living room, his hair now perfectly parted on the left side, and walks to an aged, yet sturdy, dark oak table that sits just behind his mother’s favorite “Wheel-of-Fortune-watching” chair.

On the table a book is opened, and where the pages are all bound in the middle, a red sharpie is wedged. With studious eyes fixed on the right of the two exposed pages of the book, he uncaps the sharpie, which makes a barely audible pop.

The book is a yearbook. If Mr. Bennet were to flip the book over, exposing the front, one could see that it is from nineteen sixty-eight. Above the date is LANCHESTER HIGH and below it is GO HAWGS!

He hated every minute of every day that he spent at that school.

Everyday other students picked on him. His perfectly parted hair, the thick lenses of his huge glasses, his hooked nose, and especially his “I always do whatever my momma says” attitude were apparently good enough reasons for him to receive a daily beating.

Whenever Winston was fortunate enough to stumble upon an unsuspecting grasshopper, he would catch it and then pull its legs off, one by one, all the while pretending that the innocent insect was one of his classmates.

When nineteen sixty-eight had arrived, which was Winston’s senior year and two years after the “unfortunate” hunting accident, he had become interested in a certain senior girl. Her name was Barbara Holcomb.

Barbara had never mistreated him as most of the other classmates had. To Winston, she seemed so kind. She was beautiful; her skin so radiant.

On one day of the week that came before the week of the senior prom, Winston had worked up his nerves and had asked the blonde beauty to attend the prom with him.

She accepted.

When the night of the prom had come around, however, Barbara had stood him up. When her mother answered the door, she was confused and told Winston that Barbara had already left for the prom with another young man.

Of course, Barbara was one of them.

He hated them all.

They all needed pay for what they had done.

Mr. Bennet knows that he is reminiscing again, but this time he knows that it is not a waste of time, for it is all part of the Big Finish.

In the lowest row on page thirteen of the book, he finds Barbara Holcomb’s picture. It is not hard to find because she is – was – so beautiful. In a neat fashion, Mr. Bennet draws lines from each top corner to the opposite lower corner of her picture, creating a red X.

On the same page, in the upper right corner, he sees the picture of a young man with a well-chiseled jaw. His name was Daniel Heeves. His picture has a red X already drawn on it, and Mr. Bennet knows that the X has been there for three months.

Daniel, or Dan, as everyone had called him had crossed Winston only one time, but that instance was worse than any other that he had experienced at Lanchester High.

Dan and a couple of his moronic friends had offered Winston a cigarette in the restroom while the boys were changing into their gym clothes for gym class. When Winston refused the offer, the Moronic Three belted out hearty laughs.

Dan Heeves then asked Winston why he refused, and Winston had told him that his mother would not have approved because boys are supposed to be “clean and lean.” Dan and his posse laughed again, harder that time, and Dan said, “That’s funny, ‘cause your momma looks dirty and fat to me!”

Winston hated Dan.

Dan would have to pay for what he had done.

He is pleased that Dan Heeves did pay. Mr. Bennet spent plenty of time on Dan, making sure he received adequate payment for what he had said about his dear mother.

He does not turn the page, but knows many other red Xs exist throughout that yearbook.

Barbara Holcomb has the last, necessary red X.

Mr. Bennet jerks his attention away from the past, caps the red sharpie, and lays it back in the crevasse of the book, although he will never need to use the marker again.

It is time for the Big Finish.

Mr. Bennet makes his way, once more, into the kitchen and once again extracts the pitcher of lemonade from the refrigerator. He pulls down the same glass that he had previously used and fills it with the yellow-gold “nectar of the gods” as his dear mother – God rest her soul – had always called it.

This time he will not drink the lemonade alone; this time he adds an ingredient: cyanide.

He takes the now-lethal nectar of the gods to the living room, being careful not to spill it on the tidy, cream-colored carpet, and he sits in his mother’s Wheel-of-Fortune chair.

Mr. Bennet’s enemies have paid their dues. With the cruel, efficient assistance of the tool of vengeance that now hangs under the back porch, he has littered a portion of the distant, forest floor with the gore of his enemies, and now their limbs lay intermingled with the fallen limbs of the wooden hosts.

His house is spotless, as spotless as his dear mother, whom he will shortly embrace, would have had it.

Through the thin, open spaces between the partially closed blinds, Mr. Bennet notices that the sun has given way to its lunar next of kin.

He looks from the window to the large, Roman numeral clock and sees that it is five passed seven. In less than an hour, it will be exactly a decade since his dear mother had passed away, and he has already decided that to spend ten years apart from her would affect him so harshly that he would probably revert to a vegetative state. He would have arranged to be with her long ago, but other business has held him up until now.

He realizes that Wheel of Fortune is airing.

He pushes the power button of the eighties-era TV remote and finds Pat Sajak’s voice to be soothing.

As Vanna White changes blank squares into vowels and consonants, Mr. Bennet lifts the death cocktail to his mouth and quickly drains the liquid.

The Big Finish is under way.

While contestants fumble over solving the word puzzle, Mr. Bennet waits for the cyanide to do its work. Soon he will see his mother and she will embrace him and their reunion will be far greater than any amount of peanut butter cookies or bedtime stories.

Suddenly, a memory hits him with a sharp pang and he becomes hysterical. It is not a memory unlocked via reminiscence as has recently been the case. This is a very recent memory.

The welcome mat! The blood covered Bennet’s!

Mr. Bennet knows that his mother could look past the unwashed, lemonade glass, especially since it was necessary for the Big Finish, but the Bennet family welcome mat caked in Barbara Holcomb’s blood – unthinkable!

He rises to his feet and feels the cyanide take effect. He is short of breath, and his heart and every joint in his body is swathed in immense pain.

He must clean the rug. His mother will know!

Mr. Bennet stumbles recklessly into the Wheel of Fortune chair, causing it to topple over. The toppling chair smashes into the dark oak table behind it and causes a large bowl of oranges to tip and spill zesty spheres to the floor.

He knows a couple of dropped oranges is not that bad; his mother could forgive that but not a Holcomb-blood-caked rug, so with much over-extensive effort, he stumbles past the disrupted table.

His stomach convulses and twists. The pain is greater than he has ever experienced.

Mr. Bennet formulates an ingenious idea: vomit into the sink to get rid of the cyanide, wash the rug, pick up the oranges, and straighten anything that has been put out of order, and then he will commence with the Big Finish as planned. He has plenty of time.

He takes only two, small, sluggish steps before the cyanide has become too much. He stumbles to the right and accidentally steps on a couple of oranges.

When he steps on them, he smashes them, and the goop created in the process causes his feet to slip out from under him, and he hits the thinly-carpeted floor hard.

The impact combined with the intense stomach wrenches, causes Mr. Bennet to vomit. The vomit, obviously, is not falling into the kitchen sink, as he had wanted, but is rather falling back onto his upturned face.

He cannot breathe.

He turns only his head because that is all he can move, and through burning, acid-shocked eyes, he sees the terrible mess he has made in the living room and thinks of the terrible, red-colored mess lying just beyond the front door.

Blackness begins to overtake his vision and Mr. Bennet knows he is seconds from eternity. He knows how much his mother loves him and that she will forgive his messes. He knows that when he sees her, in just a brief moment, that she will give him a warm embrace.

Mr. Winston Bennet completely fades.

Mr. Winston Bennet is embraced by something much warmer than his mother.

Mr. Winston Bennet is embraced by eternal flames.

The Big Finish.