four pieces (of apple pie)

by colin d fox


The table's immaculate setting was in disarray. Given Mrs.Percolite's predilection for order and for propriety in her househould, one would have expected her to be absent from such a scene. But there she was: sitting there in her assigned place at the head of the table closest to the fireplace, as always. The table cloth had been pulled half off and the plates and crockery had been jumbled and displaced, some of them pushed over the ege to the floor where they lay smashed and broken. Mrs.Percolite clucked quietly in her busy fussy voice. It was her best Martha Stewart mode; she had always aspired to be a queen of the household scene as MS, her one-time hero had shown herself to be, with her ingenious solutions for household issues, marvellously original recipes and settings for dinner parties and new approaches to everyday issues with running a domestic setting.

The Apple-pie dish had been placed in the center of the table but was now all the way over to Mr.Percolite's place setting. The pie had been neatly cut into six pieces, four of which had been taken out of the dish ( her favorite, one of the few remaining dishes that her parents had given them as part of their wedding gift). Mrs.Percolite smoothed her skirt out and stood up. She surveyed the surrounding room and walked gingerly over to the large window that dominated the eastern half of the room. Pulling the curtains over, she turned back to the scene that was lit by three candles on the dinner-table. She stepped over her sister's writhing body with care, feeling the old familiar pain in her joints from her long bout with polio related issues.

She crossed the floor to sit on the couch, shifting some magazines aside to allow herself to relax with enough space. Her husband was holding onto one of the table's legs in desperation, casting his head from side to side in panic, moaning softly for someone, anyone to help. She shook her head as she took in the mess. Over on the opposite side of the table, her daughter was shaking uncontrollably as her face grew more pale by the minute. Finally, her eyes rested on her father's splayed body whose freshly cut forehead lay against the cold stone base of the fireplace that so many of their friends had admired over the years.

' Oh, stop it, all of you. ' She dismissed their death throes as mere nonsense with a gesture of her hand. ' Honestly, you all act as though you had no idea this was coming. ' She fluffed up the cushion beside her and slipped it between her back and the couch. Much better.

Her Husband cried out with his fading strength. ' Why, in God's name, why ? ' She rolled her eyes. ' Oh, in God's name. Mm-hmmm, Mr sooo interested in God. Oh that's just rich that is, coming from you, so that is. '

Her daughter moaned out. ' Mom...' she feebly spoke. ' MOm, I think I'm dying. What the hell did you do...why did you...'

Mrs Percolite folded her arms. ' Well, this is just a fine to-do, now isn't it? And all of you acting the innocent, talking like I'm the bad guy here. ' She sighed. ' All I did was just decide it was time to pay back all the things you had all done to me, that's all. Now, what's so strange about that? Hmmmm? '

' You all must have heard by now that what goes around comes around? Well, I'm what went around and now I've come around. ' At this notion, she started giggling. ' Oh my, I'm sorry. I was hoping to get it all expained without any deviations. ' She held a hand to her chest and made a short fluttering motion. ' It's okay. I'll be okay, Just give me a moment.'

She gestured to the old man laying by the fireplace, his clouded over eyes afraid and scared. ' We'll start with you cause you're who it started with, Daddy. What you're feeling is the very potent venom I mixed in with your piece of apple-pie, of the Ghesa Palmae snake, a tiny green little guy who inhabits lower jungle regions in Northern Peru. Very deadly, very quick to act upon the human nervous sytem. The victim dies within thirty minutes of exposure to the toxin in a manner that feels like suffocation as paralysis, loss of speech and blindness sets in.'

Mrs Percolite turned to the others as if giving a lecture. ' A lot like how I felt after you started paying me unscheduled visits at night and doing things to me that no father ever should have done to his daughter. I was paralysed. I was too afraid, by your threats, the fear of not being believed to ever speak of it. And everyone else was blind to what was going on. '

She turned to glance at her father and then back at the others. ' Rosemary, dearest daughter. You always found it so distasteful to have a mother who couldn't walk properly, whose very body was scarred by the ravages of a horrible disease. Overhearing you talk to your friends about how disgusting you found me to be and how much you wished for a normal mom was just the icing on the cake for me, recovering from what your father had done to me. Your piece of pie was covered in a concentrated form of Tubercolosis, extracted from the pure form of the disease they use to make a vaccine. It's eighty-five percent proof and is killing you , painfully, as we speak. But at least now you'll have an idea what it feels like to suffer from such a horrible disease'

' Henry, for you I added in a special compound powder that's been around for hundreds of years. The powder itself is harmless, though it will stay in your digestive tract for months on end. It's perfectly safe on it's own but it reacts particularly badly to a certain other substance. ' Here she turned to smile at her sister's barely moving body on the floor. ' See, the other compound is similarly neutral by itself, and would be sweated or secreted out in a month or so by the body. But when you fucked my sister in our own bed, that substance, which I had slipped into a cup of coffee I prepared for her last week, got into your system and just waited there for it's companion to show up and react. '

She smiled at all of them as she sat back down. ' Yes, I know what you're thinking, and you're partially right; life is a bitch, and I can certainly see how you might think I am too, but you have to ask yourself at the end of the day, didn't I have at least SOME justification? '