Cole: The Mangler: Book 1 (A Phoenix Club Serial thriller)

BEFORE: Let Them Eat Cake

The man tromped up the porch steps and paused at the door as he stomped his feet on the rubber mat, breaking caked mud from his boots before he entered the house. The front door banged open, and he shed his thick jacket, snagging it on a hook in the entryway. His nostrils twitched, noting the lack of aroma from the kitchen.

"Woman?" he hollered as he walked along the short hallway. "I don't smell any cooking." He stepped into the kitchen. "Where is my dinner..."

His words died in his throat as he stared at the scene before him: his wife dead on the floor with multiple stab wounds and a bloody butcher knife protruding from her chest. Blood everywhere. He walked forward with slow, calculated steps and looked down at the corpse. Dead eyes stared back. His focus shifted to the boy sitting at the kitchen table, covered in blood, and eating a piece of birthday cake with his bloody hands.

The man stared at the boy for a long moment, one hand clamped to his hip, the other sliding slowly over his mouth. He sighed. "What have you done?" He walked to the table, irritated.

The boy paused eating, his face smeared in frosting and blood. "Are you mad?"

A hard sigh from the man. "Yeah, I'm mad, boy. What did I tell you?"

Setting down the crumbling piece of cake, the boy mumbled, "Wait till you got home."

"Exactly." He shook his head. "You ruined my birthday gift to you. Look at this mess. What's the rule?"

"We don't make messes."

"That's right." The man gripped the boy's smeared chin and tilted his face up. "Why did you do this?"

The boy stared into his eyes. "She wouldn't let me have my birthday cake."

"You knew you couldn't have cake until I got home, and you blew out the candles."

His eyes emotionless, the boy said, "I wanted cake. It was mine. She said no. It made me mad."

"That wasn't a good excuse to ruin this for me. And what if someone had come by before I got home? What if your friend had shown up? You would have to get rid of him. Now, is that what you want?"

"I don't care," the boy spoke quietly. "He isn't really my friend."

The man huffed, exasperated, and released the boy's face. "Start cleaning up your mess. I'll get the mop."

The boy crawled off the chair. "Are you going to whip me?"

"Yes," the man stated bluntly. "When the mess is cleaned up."

The man grabbed a mop and bucket from the pantry closet and filled the bucket with hot, soapy water, and set the boy to cleaning. He went outside and returned with a tarp that he laid out on a clean part of the kitchen floor, then transferred his wife's body onto the tarp and pulled out the knife, placing it in the sink. From the rack above the stove, he took down a heavy-duty meat cleaver and returned to the body, sinking to one knee.

"Come here, boy."

The boy left the mop in the bucket of bloody water and came to his dad.

"Get down here and hold the arm." He stretched out the dead woman's right arm.

Getting down on his knees, the boy gripped his dead mom's wrist. The man touched the wide blade of the cleaver to the woman's shoulder joint.

"If you're going to make a mess," his dad said, "you're going to learn to clean it up."

The boy nodded as the man raised the cleaver and brought it down, again and again, chopping through the shoulder socket, and finally severing the arm. Breathing quick, he handed the cleaver to his son.

"Finish the arm. Elbow joint, then wrist. Understand?"

"Yes." The boy gripped the cleaver and, without hesitation, hacked through the elbow with some effort, then more quickly severed the hand. He looked at his dad, a dull smile twitching his lips. "Like that?"

"Not bad," the man muttered. "Still a bit messy but you'll learn." He stood up. "Finish the rest. Strike at the joints. I'll pull the truck around to the side door."

The man left the kitchen as the boy moved to his mom's other arm and began hacking away, his face deadpan and eyes empty as blood splattered his face and chest and arms.

• • •

The man entered the gloom of the barn, the boy at his side. A bitter chill bit at his face as the rank odor of stale hay and dead, decaying rodents invaded his nostrils. He led the boy to one of the center wooden poles that jutted down from the high roof. The boy wrapped his arms around the pole without being told and the man tied his thin wrists with a piece of baling twine, tightening the twine till it cut into his flesh.

"Without punishment, you can't learn." The man grabbed a worn, leather strap from a nearby nail. "And if you don't learn, you're no better than a rabid beast. And what do we do to rabid beasts?"

"Put them down."

"That's right." The man reached out and gripped the back of the boy's shirt. "Do you want to be put down, boy?"

The boy shook his head. "No."

"Then you must learn to control your instincts." He ripped the boy's shirt off his back and raised his arm, bringing the strap down hard. The leather bit into his tender flesh and angry welts immediately swelled in the wake.

The boy hugged the pole and stared blankly across the gloomy barn without making a sound—not a whimper, not a cry—as silent tears trickled down his face, a physical reaction to the pain and nothing more.

He closed his eyes as a faint smile rippled across his lips, holding steady as the leather lashed his back, teaching him control.