Chalk and Cheese

Pamela laid out the breakfast bowls on the kitchen table as her youngest son, Jason read quietly. His older brother, Michael was busy running up and down the upstairs corridor screaming like a banshee whilst pushing his favourite toy car along the walls. Jason was 6, his older brother 8 but the way Michael acted it was though his maturity had stagnated or even started going backwards.

“Michael!” his mother shouted. “Stop that racket and come down here for breakfast.”

“No, I won’t.” came the defiant reply.

Pamela dropped her head in frustration. She looked across at Jason and smiled. Then she frowned. He was such a good boy but hated that a brief thought had crossed her mind. She loved them both equally, but Michael made it so difficult at times, and she loathed those fleeting moments of favouritism.

Jason was inquisitive and helpful. Michael was a tornado bringing mayhem and disaster on whichever located he visited. If ever Pamela wondered out loud what the time was, Jason would run to the nearest clock in order he could furnish his mother with the answer. If ever she was rushing about because she wasn’t sure what time the bus to the shops was due, she need only ask, and Jason would retrieve the timetable from the kitchen drawer to find out for her.

Michael had become strangely quiet, eerily so, to be precise. She made her way up the stairs to discover that he had raided her makeup drawer. He had used her lipstick to write swear words all over the wallpaper. Talcum powder was also covering the landing carpet. She screamed.

Jason called up to his mum in fright, asking what the matter was. Pamela marched over to Michael’s bedroom door and attempted to enter. He had pushed something in front of it and refused to budge.

“Look at the state of this place. Why would you do that?” She shouted.

“It wasn’t me, it was Jason,” came the lame reply.

With that she turned and walked sullenly back down the stairs, tears in her eyes. She was at her wits ends.

“What’s happened?” Jason asked, his eyes full of genuine concern.
His mother just shrugged. Jason’s eyes were so full of love and caring that her anger had briefly ebbed away.

“It’s nothing,” she replied. “It’s just your brother’s made one hell of a mess. God knows why he misbehaves. I just don’t know what’s in his heads. I don’t know how I’m going to explain this to your father when he gets home.”
She gently stroked his hair and told him that he’d best get ready for school. He nodded with a smile.

After dinner, when they’d finally got the kids to bed, Stephen, her husband, and Pamela sat down in the lounge to discuss the worsening problem. They discussed getting a child psychologist involved. The school had suggested as much as his behaviour there was no better than at home. They decided to sleep on the idea and talk about it in the morning after a good night’s sleep.

Pamela woke with a start. Their bedroom door was open, and the faint silhouette of a child was visible in the door frame. Stephen sat up and turned the bedside lamp on.

“What’s up sport, have a nightmare?” He asked while rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

Jason walked forward into the light and held his hand out. Pamela turned her bedside light on as well so she could see better. He opened his hand to show them.

“It’s just goo,” he said.

Stephen and Pamela looked upon their child, fighting back the vomit and screams. In front of them stood their 6-year-old son, his father’s hammer in one hand, his other containing fragments of skull and lumps of fleshy tissue. Blood dripped through his fingers onto their bedroom carpet.

Pamela broke down first and began to scream. Stephen couldn’t even move or make a sound.
Jason looked horrified by his mum’s response.

“B-b-but you wanted to know what was in his head,” he stammered. He looked at his father, and then back to his mother. “Mum, you wanted to know. You asked me” Jason began to sob. He let the hammer fall from his hand, and then the remains of his brother’s head and brain from the other. “You asked me, you asked me,” he repeated over and over again as his sobs turned into loud cries.

∼ Ian Sputnik